


part four: the dinner party

by andnowforyaya



Series: book one: recipes for your werewolf boyfriend [5]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Blood and Injury, Forests, M/M, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:36:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24500119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andnowforyaya/pseuds/andnowforyaya
Summary: His head was still in a fog.Kun awakens to a strange feeling in his head and his heart. Something is wrong, but he doesn't know what it could be--or who.
Relationships: Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Qian Kun, Moon Taeil/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Series: book one: recipes for your werewolf boyfriend [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1517177
Comments: 178
Kudos: 474





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> support #blacklivesmatter! have you signed, donated, emailed/called, or marched today? not sure where to start? this [carrd](https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/#) is super helpful!

Kun was halfway through eating his plate of scrambled eggs with chives for breakfast when he realized he had not added any salt to his food, and the egg curds turned bland in his mouth, dry and tasteless as chalk. He swallowed the bite with difficulty, grimacing when the food grated against the sides of his esophagus like a stone against pavement, and then he sat for a while staring at his plate as his stomach made grinding noises as though in protest. The remaining eggs hardened and cooled on the plate, turning an unappealing shade of grey and becoming the texture of rubber. Kun wasn’t even that hungry.

He stood, bringing his plate with him, and scraped the remains into the trash compactor under the sink. 

His head was still in a fog. This morning, Kun had woken up with a headache pressing into the backs of his eyes, and he’d stayed in bed with a pillow over his face until he thought he could bear rolling over slowly and sitting up. 

Next came standing. After wobbling on unsteady legs into the bathroom and standing to soak under scalding hot water for so long his skin was pink all over, he managed to dry off and get dressed, changing into soft clothes he could lounge around in all day. His body was sore and aching like that time he pushed himself to run a 10K race in the summer without properly training beforehand, but he couldn’t remember what he’d gotten up to recently that would make him feel like this.

In fact, the past couple of days were all kind of fuzzy. Kun could only equate the feeling to that of a hangover after a raging party. The more he thought about the party, the fewer details he remembered. 

When he went into the living room to look for his laptop, thinking that this level of ennui he was experiencing might make for some good introspective writing, he found two empty bottles of red wine on the floor next to the couch and one glass on the coffee table on top of a tile coaster.

“That doesn’t seem right,” Kun muttered to himself, but he went over to pick up the bottles and the glass anyway to bring them into the kitchen to be cleaned, and thought his hangover theory now had some meat to it. Kun had just gotten absolutely sloshed last night and this was why it felt like everything in the world had been shifted over to the left by two feet before Kun had woken up.

As the morning crept by slowly, the sun warming the blanket of white snow that had crystallized over the ground overnight, Kun sat on his couch and scrolled through his drafts of chapters and recipes on his laptop, a mug of tea in hand. His days began to return to him. He remembered preparing the rack of lamb and bringing it to his neighbor down the street. He remembered making the chicken curry pie and waiting so long for it to bake properly, hoping the golden pastry crust would hold. He remembered making his grandmother’s  _ mantou  _ recipe and the nostalgia that filled him when he took that first bite of the milky white bun, freshly steamed and warm in his mouth. 

But it felt like he was watching these memories being projected in front of him from a screen reel, and he knew the film had been tampered with. A recipe was missing a vital spice Kun knew he had added to it during the testing phase. An excerpt from a chapter trailed off at the end into garbled strings of letters. Absolute nonsense.

He rubbed at his eyes and scrolled through his files again, and this time the recipes were whole, and his excerpts were coherent. Perhaps he was just tired. Browsing the pictures he’d taken with his phone of his food experiments gave him some relief. This was clearly all of his work, and yet…

Kun jumped when his phone vibrated on the coffee table, loud and grating in the silence. Seeing that it was Doyoung, he bent to pick it up.

“Yes?”

“Wow, not even a ‘hello’ for your friend and agent who is checking in on you after that freak storm the other night?”

“Storm?” Kun looked out of his front windows and admired the stillness of winter outside, but now he noticed that his car was buried under a layer of snow nearly the depth of his forearm.

“Xuxi told me your power went out.”

“Did it?”

“Yeah, that’s why you were AWOL for a day. Kun, are you okay?” Doyoung sounded both annoyed and concerned, which was very typical, over the murmur of muffled conversation and music in the background.

“Are you in a cafe?” Kun asked.

“Yeah,” Doyoung said. “That place in Gastown. The one with the maps on the wall.”

“Mm, what’s the name of it again?”

“You know the one. You took me here!” 

“Oh, right,” Kun mumbled, his head starting to hurt again when he tried to remember where he’d taken Doyoung for coffee. He wished Doyoung would just check for the name on the cafe’s branded napkins or something. He tilted the screen of his laptop down a bit so that he wasn’t being accosted by its glare. “Sorry, I woke up with a headache and everything’s a bit fuzzy. Must have been the two bottles of wine I apparently drank all by myself last night.”

Doyoung whistled into the phone. “Well, that would explain the memory gaps.”

Kun supposed Doyoung had a point. He lifted his laptop and shifted it to rest on top of a pile of magazines on the coffee table. He was having a weird morning and it was time to accept it; productivity could go out the window for a few hours for Kun to banter with Doyoung for a bit before trying to nap off this strange half-conscious state he was in. 

“I know it’s a bit away,” Doyoung continued, “but I wanted to officially invite you over to ours for our New Year’s Eve’s Eve party. We’re having a few friends over.”

“Talent agents?” Kun heard between the words Doyoung was saying.

“Well, we’ve got to start getting you back on the market for when your book comes out. Make the rounds again. TV spots don’t just fall into your lap!”

“Doesn’t Taeyong get offers just by breathing?”

“But that’s Taeyong,” Doyoung said mulishly. “We mere mortals have to work for it. He’s already excited for the party, though. You know how much he loves to entertain. And it’s not just friends who are talent agents. We’ve got regular friends like you coming, too.”

“Charming.” Kun laughed and rolled his eyes in fondness. He wasn’t very dazzled by the entertainment side of the business he’d found himself in, but he did love the opportunities Doyoung had managed to get for him to talk about food and culture with other people who loved to talk about food and culture. “Alright. I’ll be there. When is it?”

“The weekend after you get back,” Doyoung said. “Don’t worry, I’ve already put it in your calendar.”

Kun sank deeper into the cushions, nearly horizontal now on the couch, put Doyoung on speaker, and brought up his calendar app, flipping forward and backwards through time. He couldn’t believe he’d already been in this cabin for nearly four months, diligently chipping away at pieces of his next book, especially since he didn’t feel like he had much to show for it. And in another two weeks, he’d be back in his apartment in Vancouver, almost certainly doing the same thing. 

He breathed deeply in his position on the couch, closing his eyes as a bouquet of familiar scents clung to the back of his nose: cedar and pine, freshly turned dirt. A sense of longing rose within his chest. The backs of his eyes burned.

“Kun? You still there?”

“Hm? Yeah. Sorry. Like I said, it’s been a weird morning.” Kun shook his head to free himself of the feeling weighing him down. He’d miss the woods when he returned home, he supposed, but he was excited to get back in regular touch with his life, with his friends. For things to go back to normal. “I’ll send you some stuff I have that’s new to look over, okay?”

“Okay,” Doyoung said. “You must have a raging hangover. So sleep it off. And don’t be a stranger, Kun. Call me. I’m your agent, but I’m also your friend.”

“I know,” Kun said. “Thanks.”

They hung up. Kun let his phone drop against the cushions somewhere as his head grew heavy on the armrest. He was so, so tired. He looked around the living room and felt as though he were looking at it all from above, floating and lost, a spectre in his own head. The radiator clacked and clanged. The throw blanket itched against his bare feet. He saw, dangling from one of the hooks by the front door, a leather collar for a big dog, and wondered if the owners of this house had brought the dog with them, wherever they were.

.

At the bottom of the mountain, the snow had already melted off, or perhaps it had never been there at all. The market in town that Kun frequented for his fresh produce was just as lively as ever even though it was late in the afternoon and some of the stalls were packing up. Kun ambled down the aisle between vendors, his empty tote bags on his shoulders, waiting for something to strike his interest inside the huge converted warehouse.

He passed by the fishmonger’s stall, shuddering when all of the vacant, empty eyes of the fish carcasses laid out in rows over the beds of ice seemed to be tracking his movements. He passed by the farmer who sold only duck meats and duck products, resisting the urge to try one of the duck jerky samples on the counter. There was the woman who sold honey in jars. The huge fruit stand with barrels of all kinds of apple varieties in front. The vegetable stands. The fresh pasta vendor. The baker who brought in fresh loaves of sourdough, braided challah, and rye every morning. 

Everyone greeted Kun with a nod and warm smile. He approached some of the stalls to chat with the vendors who knew him by name now, asking after what was freshest in their lot today. 

“All of it’s good!” the man behind the apple barrels told him. 

“Where do you bring them in from, again?”

“All over the place!” the seller told him cheerfully before moving on to the next customer.

“Oh,” Kun said, watching him go and finding it strange he hadn’t highlighted the local orchards. Kun stood before the barrels and examined the apples. Many different varieties were available, and they were sorted by color from red to yellow to green, so that the whole visual effect from a distance was a beautiful mosaic. However, he had a difficult time reading the labels over each type of apple variety, the letters on the small tags blurred and jumbled to his eye. He had the same issue with the vegetable stand.

After a while, the way his eyes pulsed in his skull became too much to bear, so by the time he’d traveled half of the market, the muscles of his face had grown tired and his smile haggard. He could not help but feel that all the conversations he was hearing in the market were about him, that conversations started as he arrived and stopped when he moved on, like reality was a bubble around him, forming as he walked. 

He put it down to his hangover.

Past these stalls, the market began to change. In between the smoothie stands and sandwich shops and salad bars were individuals selling their goods: jewelry, artisanal chocolates, spice mixes. The couple who sold dried lavender in bundles and sachets. Used books. With a start, Kun remembered the empty tote bags swinging from his shoulders, and he sighed. He’d been distracted this whole time and didn’t pick up any produce he could work with at the cabin. Suppressing a groan, Kun turned back around, resolved to walk back through the produce aisles when a small stall to his left caught his eye.

As though in a trance, Kun wandered over. 

“See something you like?” 

Kun blinked, adjusting the bags on his shoulders, reeling a bit as he realized what he was looking at. A silk scarf had been draped over the counter, and on top of this were crystals and gemstones in all shapes and sizes, some as small and round as the fingernail on Kun’s pinky, others as large as a disk that could fit in Kun’s palm. Next to the counter sat a low bookcase, its shelves misaligned and the whole structure tilting dangerously to the right. The books within were piled on top of one another, all of them looking well-thumbed and old. Behind the booth, a van with its back doors flung open was parked, and the back seat had been removed to make more space for shelves to display more crystals—larger ones, the kind Kun could see as statement art pieces in someone’s foyer, as well as cut geodes.

“I’m just looking,” Kun mumbled. “What are these used for?” He looked up at the lone person running the booth. She was beautiful in a way Kun couldn’t begin to describe, her skin reminding Kun of the snow at the top of the mountain, her hair as black as night and falling to her shoulders. Her eyes were a muted gray color, though when she turned to look this way and that, they flashed with hints of violet.

“The crystals? Depends on which one calls out to you. Mostly, they’re used for protection. Some are good for psychic energy.”

Kun strokes his fingers lightly across a row of them, mesmerized by their smooth facades and jagged edges. Some were milky white, others black, and still others rosey pink. His fingers paused over a purple shard with streaks of white within. He knew this one was amethyst. It seemed to pulse with heat under his skin, and he drew back with a startled gasp. 

Unnerved, Kun stepped away from the table and knelt in front of the bookcase to scan the spines of the volumes within, seeing titles that hinted at sun flares and moon phases, constellations and blackholes. None were books that he recognized. He picked up a small book that looked more like a journal, its brown leather binding as soft as a feather, and read the title etched across the face of it. 

_ A Study of Native Flora and their Medicinal Properties and Uses, 1909. _ He flipped through the book quickly, interested in the drawings done by hand of plants and herbs he used regularly in his cooking, before putting it back and returning to the crystals.

He stared at the amethyst shard, chewing on his bottom lip. “This one,” Kun said. “I’d like this one, please.”

The woman hummed and nodded. “That’s a good choice. May I ask, why did you choose that one?”

“It...it feels like mine,” Kun said, then flushed at how that sounded. He wasn’t sure why he’d said that.

“Crystals often call out to the people they belong to in that way,” she said with quiet understanding, a small smile forming on her lips. “Keep it safe.”

“Right.” 

Kun paid for his purchase, and she wrapped the crystal in paper and gave it to Kun, who stuffed it into his pocket. The stone was warm against his skin the entire way home, like a piece of charcoal taken from a fire and left to smolder.

.

It took ages for Kun to fall asleep that night, and in the morning when he awoke, he wasn't sure if he had slept at all. The backs of his eyes still burned, and his chest was tight and uncomfortable. He flopped over on his bed and threw his hand out to make contact with his phone and brought it to his face, squinting at the bright screen. Not even past seven. With a weary exhale, he put his phone back on the bedside table and stared at the naked amethyst shard next to it.

He hadn't known what to do with the crystal when he got home, so he put it in a shallow sauce dish and brought it with him into various rooms as he settled in for the night. In the end, none of the rooms had felt like the right home for the crystal, so he'd brought it into his bedroom and placed it on the nightstand. He reached out to touch it and found it still warm.

"What the hell," Kun whispered to himself. The world outside of Kun's covers was nearing arctic temperatures, but the rock was not. The laws of physics seemed not to apply to it.

Maybe there was a trick involved. Or maybe he just thought it was warm because his fingers were warm, and him thinking it was warm was the fault of the slow feedback loop inside of his brain. His stomach growled and twisted inside of him, loud and insistent, but he was not hungry. Rather, he was just empty. Kun put the crystal back in its dish and pressed his hand over his belly, squeezing down in an attempt to make the emptiness feel smaller. "It's just a rock," he said aloud.

He rolled out of bed and shivered, skin pebbling as cool air brushed over his bare shins. After pulling on a pair of sweats over his boxers, he went to the bathroom and splashed water over his face, and then he just stood there with his hands over his face, water dripping down his forearms and off his chin onto the counter, into the sink. 

He suddenly wanted to cry. He could not remember the last time the bed felt so cold.

.


	2. Chapter 2

Eggs again, for breakfast. Kun forced himself to finish his plate this time, even though he still found the meal unappetizing. He spent a long time making espresso in the machine before realizing he’d ruined the roast and the result would be bitter and harsh. He threw the grounds out, down the sink, where they clumped and bubbled like congealed blood.

All morning, it felt like he was wandering around with a gaping hole in his chest, and nothing could fill it. A little after noon, he turned back to food, which had always given him comfort in the past, and pored over the mix of drafted recipes he had in a file on his laptop while standing at the kitchen counter. He was confused to find that th e recipes didn’t really come together around a central theme, like the recipes had been borne out of wanting to cook for someone who was either very picky or very adventurous, and now he didn’t know what this imaginary person wanted to try next. 

When he realized that there were hardly any seafood recipes in his collection, he decided he should try for fish, and luckily yesterday he’d picked up a couple of barramundi filets at the market, not knowing what to do with them then but hoping that inspiration would strike. He took these out of the fridge and slapped them down onto his cutting board, staring down at glistening, rectangular cuts of pale flesh. 

When Kun was feeling lost, he liked to cook familiar, comforting dishes that reminded him of home, and nothing was more familiar than steamed fish with a scallion, ginger, and soy dressing. His grandmother used to make it with all kinds of different fish twice a week for dinner, and it had been a staple on their kitchen table growing up. 

He didn’t really need to think as he prepared the dish since he’d made it so many times before, but he took extra care in slicing the scallions into the thinnest ribbons he could manage, and finely chopping the ginger into slivers. After he placed the fish filets into the pot with the steamer shelf to cook, he heated up a tupperware container of cooked white rice in the microwave and went back to his fridge to mull over what he else he could add to the dish. 

He decided he wanted an extra kick to the dressing, and in the vegetable drawer, he found three vibrantly red, finger-sized Thai chiles. A smile flickered across his face. He took two chiles out and chopped them into thin rings. 

Next, Kun checked the doneness of the fish with a prod of his finger and, finding the meat yielding but not too tender anymore, took the filets out of the steamer to rest on a large plate. He stirred the chile, ginger, and scallion mixture into a small bowl with soy sauce and oil and poured the dressing over the fish, inhaling the floral and spicy steam that arose from the dish when the aromatics bloomed as they encountered heat. 

He took the rice out of the microwave and filled two small bowls with a pretty, domed mound of the sticky grains and brought these bowls, a pair of chopsticks, two spoons, and the plate of fish over the kitchen table, looking forward to digging in and hoping it tasted as good as it smelled. 

Only when he sat down did he realize he had prepared a meal for two.

He felt that gaping hole in his chest more acutely than ever before.

When he cooked, he cooked for the person who would be eating his food. He lived to bring momentary light and joy to people through his meals. But now he was alone. He missed this faceless person who inspired him, even if they weren’t real. 

Maybe after this he should put on a movie or something. One more day on the couch doing nothing couldn’t hurt, could it? He ate slowly, savoring the delicate meat at first but finding it losing its flavor as his listlessness grew and his appetite diminished. Perhaps he should call Chenle, his cousin at home, and ask him how school was going. Chenle could always entertain him with stories for hours.

But after he’d finished, he found he didn’t have the energy for socialization at all, and put the food away, wiped down the counter, and washed his hands. The remaining coffee grounds from this morning went down the gurgling drain with the running water, and steam started rising from the sink. He knew the water was scalding, but he felt disconnected from it as he watched it burst from the faucet, having flipped the knob back as far as it could go. His mind wandered to the amethyst shard upstairs, nestled in its little dish, and the warmth that seemed to emanate from it. 

Steam continued to rise. 

It didn’t hurt at first. For a second more. But the pain flared surprisingly, and he cursed under his breath when it burned, yanking his hands back and flipping the knob closed. The water dripped and then stopped. Across the back of his left hand streaked an angry red line. The longer he looked at it, the shinier it became. Glossy, like plastic wrap. Why hadn’t he pulled his hands away earlier?

Suddenly, outside the back door, he heard a commotion that sounded like a small, rumbling avalanche, followed by an echo of a whimper. His heart immediately jumped into his throat and started to pound. That sounded like a dog. What was a dog doing out in his backyard in the dead of winter?  He dried his hands on a kitchen rag, carefully avoiding the burned area, and ran to the door and flung it open, only to be blasted in the face by a harsh gust of wind and pelted by ice crystals. 

When the wind died down, it was quiet, and nothing stirred. The snow was a whole, uninterrupted field covering the yard. No dog. No avalanche. 

Kun fell to his knees. There was just emptiness, until the trail, until the woods. 

Unsettled, Kun wondered if his mind was playing tricks on him, making him imagine things and miss things that had never been there. Perhaps it was just that he’d been alone in this cabin for a very long time, and the dissonance he’d been experiencing in his own body was starting to get to him.

And then between the trees, he saw a flash of red.

.

“This was probably a bad idea,” Kun mumbled to himself as he traipsed along the snow-covered trail, shin-deep in it. With the sun high in the sky and hovering close to the tops of the trees, he was already starting to sweat under his layers. More than once, his boots had skidded across a patch of ice hidden under the fresh powder and Kun had crashed to his knees, but though he grumbled, he was single-minded in his search, the clarity of his purpose driving him forward, giving him direction.

He hadn’t imagined the dog. When he’d gone upstairs and looked out across the snow he’d seen what hadn’t been discernible from the ground level but was apparent at a bird’s eye view: tracks in the snow. Paw prints, trailing from right around where he knew his back patio began all the way to the line of trees behind the house. What if it had been the cabin’s owner’s dog? He’d thought of the collar hanging by the door and his heart twisted in his chest. If he was out there, he was probably scared and lost and alone and hungry. 

He’d grabbed the amethyst, stuffed it into his pocket, and headed out to go after the animal.

So onward Kun trudged through the snow, following the trail of paw prints deep into the woods, until he rounded a bend in the running path and came across a fork there. One branch of the path was familiar and one he’d run many times before, leading him back home, but the other branch was roped off by red tape strung up between two trees. In all his time in these mountains, Kun couldn’t recall ever seeing this trail blocked off against foot traffic, and he wondered what dangers had been discovered that now lay beyond the tape. The last time he’d gone down this less-travelled path, all he’d seen at the end was the run-down shack with its sagging porch and the hole in its roof like a giant had swooped in from above and taken a bite out of it. 

To the side of the path marked by red tape, near a patch of bramble, Kun spotted the tracks again. With a gasp he ducked under the flimsy barrier to continue to follow them, simultaneously on the lookout for anything that might have been grounds for marking off the area, like a fallen tree or patches of ice, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. 

The tracks continued for a dozen or so paces before they vanished. The snow in front him was white, whole and untouched, like the animal had been lifted into the air. Kun looked up, scanning the trees before realizing what he was doing and chuckling to himself.

“Get a grip. He’s not in the trees,” he whispered. “And he can’t have just vanished.”

The trees shook with wind and it sounded like soft, mocking laughter, and snow from their covered boughs fell in great chunks to the ground. Kun hurriedly dodged the slabs on their way down lest he be bludgeoned. When the snow settled, he saw a flash of red out of the corner of his eye that made his heart kick into his ribs. 

“Hey!” Kun called out, excited to have picked up the trail again. “Here, uh, boy! Or girl!” He whistled, hoping to get the dog’s attention, but the flash of red whisked away, further between the trees. He bolted after it, determined to make sure the animal was okay. Once he got it home, he could call animal services, or maybe Xuxi, for help. “Hey! Slow down!”

Kun chased the dog until his lungs were burning, never actually seeing it, always seeing the flash of red out of the corner of his eye. It was fast, moving from tree to tree, behind shadows and playing with the light. Kun could not figure out how it was moving so seamlessly, how it could jump from being in front of him to being behind him in a blink. 

He paused to catch his breath when his knees felt like jelly, letting his head flop back, and he noticed how the thin and twisting branches above him were so knobby and pale that they looked like bones reaching toward each other. The skeleton trees were all twined together at the top. Like a dome ceiling of branches had formed over the forest. Like he was trapped in a snowglobe.

He wished he had help looking for the animal.

_ Thud. _

Kun startled, turning in the direction of the noise, and saw a man lurching slowly toward him. For a moment he panicked, scared that he shouldn’t have crossed the red tape after all, as it may have been marking the edge of someone’s property and now he was trespassing, but as he stared, he realized that the shape of him was familiar.

“Kun?” the man called out.

Kun squinted, his thrumming pulse starting to slow. “J-Johnny?” As Johnny neared, Kun frowned when he noticed that Johnny, in a thermal top and jeans, was not dressed for the outdoors. “What are you doing out here?”

“What are  _ you  _ doing out here?” Johnny countered when he was in front of him.

“I…thought I saw something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” Kun hedged, uncertain why he was feeling defensive. “A dog, maybe.”

“A dog…” Johnny shivered with his whole body, and Kun undid his scarf quickly, throwing it around Johnny’s neck. 

“Wear this. Did you just—why didn’t you put on any clothes?”

“Why didn’t I…?” Johnny looked down at himself as Kun tightened the scarf, blinking slowly. “I think I just woke up. It’s been a weird morning.”

“Let’s get you back inside,” Kun suggested, worried for his friend. Johnny’s lips were looking a little blue, so the dog would have to wait. It wasn’t that cold out anymore, but it was still cold enough for the snow to stick around. He turned Johnny gently and held him by the elbow when the taller man stumbled for his footing.

“Sorry, I,” Johnny huffed. Swallowed. He narrowed his eyes at Kun and then frowned down at his feet. “I’m not wearing any shoes.”

“That’s…okay,” Kun said carefully. “That’s okay. Let’s go back inside to mine, warm up, and then I’ll drive you back to yours, okay?”

“Yeah, that sounds…that sounds good.” Johnny nodded stiffly, the look in his eyes lost and bewildered. He crossed his arms and stuffed his hands into his armpits.

As they returned down the path back to the house, Kun peered behind his shoulder and caught another glimpse of red between the trees. This shade of red reminded Kun of cherries in the middle of summer, ripe and bursting with sweetness, the association so vivid that his mouth soured around the imagined, tart taste.

.

After quietly savoring a mug each of sweet, slightly bitter dark hot chocolate in Kun’s kitchen, Kun bundled Johnny up in his biggest cardigan, a long scarf, a beanie, thick socks, and house slippers (because none of Kun's other shoes would fit on his feet) and got him into the car. Conversation did not seem to be something Johnny was capable of at the moment, but he hummed in appreciation when Kun put the heat on full blast.

Kun wondered if Johnny had been sleepwalking and how long he’d been out in the woods, unprotected. There had been no signs of frostbite that Kun could tell, but Johnny was clearly out of it. The man stared out the passenger side window the whole drive over. Kun could see in his reflection how his eyebrows dipped and furrowed, how he chewed on his bottom lip, so he flipped the radio on for a distraction and was relieved to find he was already tuned into a station playing soft, mellow music. 

He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding when Johnny sighed and rested his head against the glass.

“We’re almost there,” Kun said.

“I know,” Johnny mumbled. He hid his hands in the sleeves of Kun’s cardigan. “Thanks, really. It’s been—I don’t know what it’s been.”

The lost look in his eyes was hauntingly familiar, and with a start, Kun realized where he’d seen it before—in the mirror inside his bathroom, yesterday. “Do you…do you kind of feel like you’re about to get a migraine?”

They pulled into Johnny’s driveway where his truck was parked. Johnny nodded hesitantly. “I don’t normally get migraines, but if I did, this is probably what it would feel like? Disconnected. Out of my own body. My head’s a balloon that’s about to pop.”

“I felt like that yesterday when I woke up,” Kun said. He put the car in park and shut off the engine, and they sat in the sudden silence that followed. Soon, Kun could see their breaths forming white clouds before their faces. He didn’t want Johnny to be alarmed. “I feel better today, though. I’m sure it’s just a passing thing. A bug.”

“A bug,” Johnny repeated with a hint of disbelief. “Right.”

They went inside, and by the door, Johnny apologized for ruining Kun’s house slippers and promised to get him new ones while Kun insisted that there was no need, he was more than happy to help a friend, and he wouldn’t need the slippers in about two weeks anyway, as he’d be going home.

“Home?”

"My time here is up," Kun tried to say jokingly but found himself choking around the words. Johnny sat at the table in the kitchen, the garish light overhead making the shadows in the room long and harsh. Kun hovered at the doorway, uncertain if he should stay. The wind was picking up outside, howling as though it were a mournful ghoul circling the house. "I've got to get back to the city. I'll be spending the holidays with my family, and then it's back to work on the book."

"It feels strange to think about," Johnny admitted, his voice quiet, his tone contemplative. "I almost forgot you were from somewhere else."

"Aren't we all from somewhere else?"

"Don't get philosophical on me, Kun." Johnny finally cracked a smile. "My head can't take it right now."

Kun grinned, leaning against the door jamb. The wood was warm and soft to the touch. Kun traced his fingers over it, a trapped emotion caught in his heart. _ Kun, come back upstairs, _ he heard in the howling wind outside. His finger snagged on a splinter, and Kun hissed, jerking his hand back.

Johnny peered at him worriedly. "You okay? Come sit down for a while."

Kun brought his hand to his face and pinched the splinter out of the pad of his index finger. A tiny bead of blood welled up, and he wiped it away before he went to the table to sit next to Johnny, shaken. The windows rattled in their frames. The backdoor shook on its hinges. Overhead, the floorboards creaked as the house shifted on its foundations, rocking with the wind. "You didn't hear that?" Kun asked.

"Hear what?"

Kun shook his head, biting into his bottom lip. Perhaps he'd imagined it. Perhaps he was still out of sorts from yesterday. "Nothing, never mind. Must have been the wind. Are you feeling better?"

"Better than I was an hour ago, turning into a popsicle outside, yes," Johnny said. "But better? I'm not sure about that." He put his face into his hands and groaned, clawing his fingers through his hair. His groaning sounded eerily similar to the ghoul’s circling the house. "I'm still…waking up. I really don’t know why I was out there…"

"I don't want to leave you alone yet, then," Kun said kindly. He put his hand on Johnny's shoulder and squeezed. They sat for a while together in the kitchen, talking but not really talking, just savoring each other’s company. Johnny was probably just as lonely as Kun was at times, all alone in this big house in the middle of the woods. A few years ago, being friends with a man like Johnny, handsome with sharp features but soft lips, kind to a fault, giving until he was depleted, would have made Ming go wild with insecurity. 

Kun chuckled to himself when the conversation lulled. He had not thought about Ming for a long time, and doing so now only made him feel a bit sad.

“Why were  _ you  _ out in the woods, Kun?” Johnny asked, and even though the lull had not been long, the question felt sudden, and threw Kun off balance.

“I told you,” Kun said haltingly. “There was a dog.”

Johnny raised an eyebrow. “Did you adopt one recently?” 

“No, I…I heard it outside my house. I thought it might be a local pet that was lost. Does the cabin’s owner have a dog?”

“Not that I know of,” Johnny said. “But there's this really old cabin in the woods," Johnny continued after a thoughtful pause. "No one's lived in it for years that I know of, but maybe that’s changed. Maybe someone’s moved in, brought their dog with them?”

Kun’s ears started ringing at Johnny's words, low and unobtrusive at first, but the siren song grew louder and louder until it drowned out all other noise. They’d had this conversation before. He was certain of it. He’d come into Johnny’s house and asked Johnny about a dog in the woods, and Johnny had told him James and Sarah, their neighbors up the road, didn’t have a dog but maybe someone had moved into the cabin between their houses. The cabin that was at the end of the less trodden, darker path. 

When the ringing stopped, Kun felt a little sick and like his head was splitting in two.

“We’ve already talked about this,” Kun whispered. “Don’t you remember?”

“What? Like deja vu?” Johnny’s gaze was entirely innocent and curious, a shadow of concern lying in wait. 

Kun’s stomach roiled. “No, I don’t think—I’ll be right back.” He excused himself to head to the washroom near the front door. Inside, he stood at the sink and breathed deeply and slowly through his nose, trying to force the nausea down. It wasn’t deja vu; it was something else. He flipped the water on and sudsed up his hands, rinsing for a moment before looking up into the mirror.

A different face was looking back.

“AH!” Kun jumped back, the water still running, and nearly stumbled into the toilet. 

“Thank fuck,” the boy in the mirror said. “I can’t reach Johnny. Kun, listen, I don’t know how long I have—”

“I’m really losing it,” Kun mumbled, wet hands trembling at his sides. “I’m losing my mind.” Yesterday’s strange feeling of detachment from the world must have been a symptom of this, whatever this was. He approached the mirror cautiously, flinching when the boy sighed in exasperation.

“You don’t remember me. Great. It’s Donghyuck? Haechan? C’mon, this has got to ring a bell.” Donghyuck’s eyes flashed violet as he spoke, and his silver hair was floppy in the front and curled around his ears. He wore a crystal pendant at his neck, the same color and shape as the one Kun had picked up at the market. Kun swore he knew him from somewhere.

Kun’s knees wobbled. He caught himself on the sink with his hands so he wouldn’t fall to the ground. “This is not real,” he tried to convince himself. His heart was pounding so hard that it felt like it was trying to hammer its way out of his chest. He closed his eyes and saw darkness, and a bookstore, and a crystal bowl. He opened his eyes and saw Donghyuck in the mirror.

“You bet this is not real,” Donghyuck said, leaning toward the glass so urgently that Kun thought he might just break through, leaving the mirror in broken shards behind himself. “Now, wake up!”

“What?”

“I can’t reach you in the waking world. I can’t  _ see  _ you. I lose the signal in the woods behind your house. It’s like—it’s like there’s a  _ wall _ .” Donghyuck bit into his bottom lip hard, and Kun could just make out the shine of tears welling in his eyes. “The sisters are strong, but you have to be stronger right now. You have to overcome this. I don’t know where Johnny  _ is _ . We need you.  _ He  _ needs you. Wake—!”

He disappeared. All was quiet save for the pounding of blood in Kun’s ears. 

Kun’s reflection blinked back at him, pale and stunned, his hair looking like he’d just come in after facing a windstorm. He flipped off the water and held onto the edge of the sink with a white-knuckled grip, forcing himself to take deep, slow breaths again. He reached out to touch the mirror and found the glass cool under the pads of his fingers, under his palm.

“Am I hallucinating?” he asked the boy who was no longer there. His head spun as he struggled to reorient himself in the closet-sized room. The ordinary mirror before him, the toilet behind, the light humming above. To the right, on the wall beside him, he noticed for the first time the small, framed photo hanging above the hook for the hand towel. Drawn to it, he took the frame off the wall and traced his fingers over the glass protecting the image within, over the shape of the man with long hair tied back at the nape, his eyes sharp as flint and his smile hiding secrets. Next to him was a wolf with a collar studded with silver buttons around its neck. 

He thought of the dog he’d been chasing. The conversation with Johnny. The voice in the wind. Something wasn’t right. Something was missing, something very important.

A name was fighting to be known in his mind, its shadowed form elusive and incorporeal. And then, suddenly— 

He remembered the sound that the silver marble warmed by blood made as it rolled off the table and thunked onto the floor. He remembered how humidity clung to his skin as he stepped into the bathroom upstairs in this house, the bath drawn already, a small figure quivering in the tub. He remembered warmth. Cedar and pine and freshly turned dirt. Laughter in the kitchen as they tested the spices that would go into the chicken curry pie. Running through the woods in the mornings. Evenings on the couch with the radiator clacking, a movie on the television. Golden eyes and golden skin. A nose at his pulse, a thigh between his legs. A feeling like he’d been made whole.

And magic. Oh, he remembered magic. 

He remembered the heat that built in his fingers as he cooked, and the golden sparks welding together wards, and the amethyst shard that was a gift. He remembered an old, dusty couch in an old, dusty library and someone curled into his side, and a connection so strong that it was like their heartstrings were tied together between their bodies. 

He remembered being terrified of the power he had to hurt them.

This was the person Kun had been cooking for, but why was he missing from his mind? Why couldn’t Kun see a face? Why couldn’t he call out a name? It was like someone had taken scissors and scratched them out of each frame on the reel of Kun’s memories, but Kun could feel their shape like a hole in his chest. Someone had cut up the film and put it back together all wrong. 

Johnny knocked on the door, and the frame crashed to the floor through Kun’s slack fingers, the glass cover breaking in half. “Kun? You okay in there?”

“I’m, um—” Kun choked out. This was wrong. This was all very, very wrong. Reality was turned around. He had to get out of here. The walls were closing in on him, and the air was being sucked out of the tiny room. He flung the door open and burst out of the bathroom, quickly moving across the foyer to where his boots were still drying on a dirtied rug. 

Johnny jumped out of his way but followed at a distance. 

“I’m sorry, but I need to go,” Kun said, not meeting Johnny’s eyes, not daring to pause lest he forget everything that was important again. “I’m sorry about the photo.”

“Hey, it’s fine. The photo’s fine. The frame was cheap. Don’t worry about it.”

“Who’s the man in the photo, Johnny?” Kun asked while stringing up his boots. 

“There’s no man in the photo, Kun…”

“There is!” Kun shouted so suddenly that Johnny startled back and caught himself on the railing of the staircase. “There is a man in the photo, you just don’t remember him. I’m not even sure  _ I _ do, really, but it’s coming back. It’s coming back. You have to remember his name, Johnny. He’s there,” Kun insisted. Even from across the foyer, he could make out under the broken glass that the photo had changed into one of a waterfall cascading into a lake below, but he was sure of what he’d seen before. The man and the wolf. His breath shuddered in his chest. “I’m really sorry, I have to—”

He bit back a sob as he fumbled with the doorknob, managing to wrench the door open.

“I don’t know if you should be driving like this.” Johnny padded after him in his socks, stopping before the threshold between his door and the outside world.

“I’ll be fine. Because, you see," Kun said as he reached his car, "none of this is real.”

.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> general warning for blood, angst, and other heaviness ahead

Kun raced home. The car was barely in park before he shot out of it, sprinting to the house, through the front door, and up the stairs. He grabbed the crystal from its sauce dish in his bedroom and yelped, suddenly dropping it to the floor with a clatter, when his palm flared with pain. It was so hot that Kun could almost hear it sizzling on the hardwood. Dragging his sleeve over his hand, Kun picked the crystal up with the fabric as a barrier between it and his bare skin, and brought it with him into the bathroom.

“Donghyuck!” he called out, facing the mirror. “Donghyuck! Show yourself!” He squeezed the shard in his palm, but Donghyuck did not surface. Kun’s reflection remained clear, unwavering, and whole. 

“Donghyuck!” he tried again desperately, pressing his palm to the glass. He needed answers. Either he had really lost his mind somehow, or he was right that this reality had been pieced together out of leftover pieces of film on the cutting room floor. But why? He needed to know what the hell was going on, why he could only remember half a life, why he ached so much when he looked back on these porous memories. What was he forgetting?  _ Who  _ was he forgetting? 

How was he going to fix this?

“Donghyuck! Come back, I need you!” He pounded his fist against the mirror. It splintered at the point of impact, and where there was one Kun before there were now three, these fractured images all reflecting back a man with black holes for pupils and dark circles under his eyes. The boy would not come. Kun drew back, breathing hard, and lowered his fist. The crystal in his other hand was still burning.

He thought of the woman in the market who sold it to him. “Of course.”

Kun spun on his heels. The sun was on its way down, but there were scant hours of light yet left in the day. If he were lucky and he hurried, her booth would still be open at the end of the market.

.

She was organizing the books in her lopsided bookcase when Kun, pink-cheeked and winded, arrived at her booth.

“Hello,” she greeted with a warm smile, standing with the grace of a dancer, a thin leather-bound volume in her hand. The black dress she wore reached her ankles and was made out of some material that made it light and flowy, even when there was no breeze. Rings adorned her slim fingers and long earrings dangled from her ears. All of her jewelry was silver and embellished with shiny gems and polished stones. Her expression fell when she took in Kun’s disheveled appearance. “Oh, are you—?”

He was huffing and puffing from sprinting to this end of the market and impatiently pushed his sweat-matted hair back from his face. “Did you have something to do with this?” Kun asked boldly.

“Something to do…?” She stepped behind the table, placing the book down on the surface between them, and hooked her long hair behind her ears, all while keeping her gaze averted. 

“With all this.” Kun swept his hand out across his body, indicating  _ everything _ . “I’ve been feeling so out of it and _finally_ I understand why. I need your help. I'm remembering things!” Kun said urgently. He leaned forward and slammed both hands on the table below the row of crystals displayed on the scarf to get her attention, but immediately felt like a bully when she flinched. “Sorry.” 

His eyes raked over the crystals. Amethyst, rose quartz, obsidian, and moonstone. The names of the stones he had not recognized before now came to him easily. He continued in a more measured tone, “Like I said, I remember things. Things that—that happened in another life. Things that I miss and that I love. Things to do with mag—”

“Shh!” the woman hissed, raising her bejeweled hands in alarm. She looked at Kun finally and her face was pale, drained of color. “Not so loud. Someone will hear.”

“Who?” Kun challenged. 

“My sister.” 

As though on cue, another woman emerged out of the passenger side of the van behind the booth. She was wearing black also, though her dress fit closer to her body and the cut of the skirt accentuated her long legs. Her sheet of black hair reached her shoulder blades, and her lipstick was red. As red as summer cherries. She was stunning, and Kun was rendered silent. 

“Seulgi,” she said in a voice that brought Kun images of smoke and mirrors. She prowled toward them, and when she reached her sister, she draped herself over her shoulder. Her eyes flashed a vibrant violet color, their glow hypnotizing. “What are you trying to sell this poor man?”

“Nothing, Sooyoung,” Seulgi said meekly. “He was just stopping by.”

“You came here yesterday, too.” Everything Sooyoung said sounded like a sigh. “Is there something wrong?”

Sooyoung’s smile was patient and kind, but Kun noticed the way Seulgi’s mouth pinched into a tight frown, to the way her eyes screamed at him not to say anything, and, not sure what the stakes were yet, Kun tamped down on his pressing need for answers and clarity and decided to listen to what Seulgi was not saying. 

“There’s nothing wrong,” Kun lied. “I just bought a crystal here yesterday and thought it was pretty. I wanted to get another one.”

“Is that all?” Sooyoung asked coquettishly, fluttering her lashes as she pouted. When Kun just muttered, “mhm,” she raised herself up to her full height, which was nearly level with Kun, and jutted her hip out to the side, crossing her arms. “I see. Well, if you want to start a crystal collection, you should go big or go home. Get one of  _ these _ .” As she spoke, she gestured grandly to the crystal display behind her, in the back of the van. 

“They look expensive.”

“Pfft. They’re worth it. They're quality.”

“Or you could diversify your collection,” Seulgi offered. “You bought amethyst yesterday. Maybe today you could get moonstone.” She pushed a milky white crystal cut and polished into the shape of a pebble forward out of the line of other gems and stones. Her gaze darted to her sister, whose nostrils had flared as she peered down at the crystal with the predatory stare of an eagle upon a mouse. Seulgi continued after a pause, “Or rose quartz. You can’t have a collection without rose quartz.”

Sooyoung sighed loudly before backing off with an irritated huff, turning around to organize the displays in the van, still within earshot.

Seulgi did not push another crystal forward. She looked at Kun meaningfully, and Kun immediately understood her intention.

“I’ll take it, then,” Kun said. “Will it help me...?”

“The rose quartz?” Seulgi interjected before Kun could finish his question. She picked up the moonstone and began to wrap it in tissue paper. “Yes.”

“Thank you.”

She extended the moonstone to Kun and tightened her hand around his urgently when he tried to take it from her. When she pulled him forward, Kun could see the storm behind her eyes. 

“Cleanse it in salt water for at least an hour,” Seulgi said. “And sleep with it under your pillow.” Her voice dropped to the barest of whispers. “You will know then what to do.”

.

Kun did not know at all what to do now. He had submerged the moonstone in a mug of salt water as soon as he returned home, and, after a moment of reflection, quickly did the same with the amethyst in another mug. And then he paced the kitchen for the better part of an hour, replaying the memories that had come back to him over and over in his mind, hoping for more details to come forward to fill the gaps. None came. 

He saw the same things: the silver marble, the quivering figure in the bathtub, the row of spices in the kitchen for chicken curry pie. He felt the same things, like phantom whispers over his skin: warmth, a soft touch, a cheek curved perfectly under his palm, fear. 

He stumbled upstairs to his bathroom mirror and called for Donghyuck. He came back down into the kitchen when no one appeared and considered going to Johnny’s and screaming into the mirror of his bathroom instead. He ended up sitting at the kitchen table as his mind spiraled.

He was alone in this house, but now he was certain that he had not always been. But how could this be? Was he somehow in some other universe? Another timeline of his life? Why were his memories incomplete? Why did Johnny, too, not remember? The man in the photo in Johnny's bathroom had been so familiar and yet didn’t evoke the same feelings as when Kun thought about the person trembling in the bathtub. 

Kun loved that person. 

The man in the photo? Not so much.

There had to be a way for Kun to understand what was happening to him, to his world. What had Donghyuck said? That he needed to wake up? What did that mean?

He thought back further, to yesterday morning when he awoke feeling like he’d eaten mouthfuls of cotton and had stuck his head in the oven for too long. He hadn’t felt like eating. He hadn’t remembered a thing about the night before. And then Doyoung had called.

What had they even spoken about? He remembered the topic of Kun going back home had come up. There was a party Doyoung wanted to throw, and Taeyong was excited to entertain…and there was something else. Something that hadn’t felt right at all but Kun had not been paying attention then the way he was paying attention now. 

Doyoung had been at that cafe in Gastown. The name escaped Kun, and he hadn’t found it strange while on the phone with Doyoung that the name would escape him, too. But now…? 

Hunched over his phone at the kitchen table, Kun called Doyoung and chewed on his thumbnail while he waited for his friend to answer. When the line connected, he launched into his question before Doyoung even had the chance to finish saying, “Hello?”

“Where was that cafe that you went to yesterday?” Kun asked hurriedly while putting Doyoung on speaker.

“Yesterday?” Doyoung asked. “What?”

“Just, I’m wondering if you remember the name yet. It’s been bothering me.”

“Oh, haha,” Doyoung chuckled quietly into the receiver. “Of course. Um. You know, I can’t remember?”

“So look it up.” 

“What?” 

“Look it up, Doyoung.” 

“What are playing at, Kun…?” 

A knot was growing in Kun’s stomach. He felt the answer on the tip of his tongue like a familiar yet unnameable spice he needed to identify to perfect a dish. “You can’t look it up, can you?” Kun said. “Because  _ I _ don’t remember what it’s called. So you  _ can’t  _ remember what it’s called. And you can’t look it up. Because you are me. And everyone at the market is me. Except for Seulgi and Sooyoung. And Johnny. They’re not me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Kun,” Doyoung said stiffly.

“I think you do,” Kun whispered to himself, pulling the phone away from his ear. “I think you know—because I know—that we’re trapped here. Somehow we’re trapped here in my own head. I'm dreaming.” 

Doyoung started to protest, but Kun hung up, not needing to hear more. Doyoung was not really Doyoung, anyway.

Outside, the sky was dark as clouds thickened around the moon. The woods were still and silent. If Kun were trapped in his own head then he had access to all the gaps in his memories. He just needed to open the door to let them in. Now that Seulgi had told him he had to sleep for the answers to come, he fretted over not being able to succumb to unconsciousness while he was too busy thinking about needing it, and decided to occupy his thoughts and hands by brewing a chamomile and lavender tea that should help him settle. 

As the kettle came to a boil, he thought hard about slumber, and when the kettle shrieked, he filled his mug with water and hoped that when it all came back, it would not hurt.

.

He awoke in the middle of the night to the wind howling outside and to thunderous pounding at his door, but when he opened his eyes the disturbance fell away, and it was silent. 

Kun knew he was not alone. Light shone through the crack underneath the door to his bathroom, and a shadow moved behind it. Fear froze his limbs and made the bed sheets and covers feel like he was trapped in concrete. Though his blood pounded in his ears and his heart tripped over itself in his chest, he dared not make any sound.

Then he heard the toilet flush, followed by humming and the water running in the sink. The tone was light and sweet, but the tune was unfamiliar. He let out a sigh. Surely, if there was an axe murderer in his bathroom, they wouldn’t be announcing their presence by relieving themselves and humming a merry melody. But then who was this person, and why had they suddenly appeared in Kun’s home in the middle of the night?

He jolted in place in bed as his limbs became unstuck. Was it Donghyuck? 

The door creaked open just enough for a body to slip through, and the light clicked off before Kun could make out who the figure now thrown into shadow was. Their blobbish, uncertain shape in the dark made its way toward the bed. Kun was a thought away from bolting when moonlight spilled across the other’s face and made his breath catch in his lungs.

Golden skin and golden eyes. A head of soft, wild black hair. A smile that made Kun’s entire body warm. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, seeing that Kun was awake and staring at him. “I thought I was being quiet.”

_ “Ten.” _ Kun’s voice was shredded to ribbons, and the name felt raw as it burned its way out of his throat, as it lit a fire that blazed and threw light onto what was once dark and shadowed. 

Kun remembered everything. 

He remembered waking up to a stranger on his couch and slowly falling in love with him. He remembered how Ten would duck under his arm while he was at the stove to sniff at whatever he was cooking, and how once he got so close to the flame he’d nearly singed off his own eyebrows. How Ten had run away and how Kun felt like he could rip the world in half just to find him, and how this had led him to Donghyuck in the bookstore, and to scrying for the first time. He remembered when Ten came back how happy Kun had been, and then how the thought of hurting Ten with his magic—uncontrollable, wild—paralyzed him. How he’d cried brokenly on his living room floor while Ten tried to comfort him. He remembered Johnny and Taeil, and the library hidden in another world between two windows in his neighbor’s living room. 

Ten’s name had filled the gaps, had righted the faulty film reel of his memories, so he spoke the name aloud, over and over lest he lose it again. “Ten, Ten, Ten…”

Ten crawled into bed with him, and Kun felt Ten’s hands cup his face gently as tears welled into his eyes. Was this real? Had everything before this been a horrible nightmare Kun couldn’t escape? Was he back in the waking world?

“Hey…” Ten's eyes were like honey in the sunlight. He trailed his lips slowly over Kun’s cheeks, over his chin, leaving tiny kisses in his wake. “Hey, Kun. It’s okay. What’s wrong? What’s wrong, Kun?”

Kun could feel Ten’s heart thumping against his own at their chests. How could he have forgotten him? How could he have forgotten this? Ten’s scent of cedar and pine, Ten’s comfortable and familiar warmth, how he always wriggled until their bodies were perfectly aligned. A piece of his soul had come back to him, and he held onto Ten’s wrists desperately as Ten drew him in to kiss his forehead, his nose, his lips.

“I love you,” Kun said, because he had not said it enough before, and he needed Ten to know for certain. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too,” Ten sighed. "Why are you crying?"

“I had this horrible dream. You were gone. It was empty.  _ I  _ was empty. It was awful.”

Ten stroked his thumbs gently over Kun's cheeks and touched his forehead to Kun's. Their breaths mingled in the space between them. He was so close, and Kun was never going to let him go again if he could help it. Kun thought dangerously that Ten was not just in his heart; Ten  _ was  _ his heart. They kissed, and it lit Kun from within with a raw, burning energy. He didn't want the kiss to end. He needed Ten the way a fire needed oxygen.

Then Ten pulled away, his hands still cupped around Kun's cheeks. He looked sad, the gold in his eyes muted and dull. “You are still dreaming, love,” Ten said quietly. “Remember the moonstone?”

Ice flooded Kun’s veins. He examined Ten with scrutiny in his gaze, thinking back on Seulgi and remembering now how her eyes had flashed purple and how Sooyoung’s had flashed violet. Of course. They were witches, too. “How do you know about that?”

Ten leaned forward and kissed him again on the forehead, right between his eyebrows. The light, caressing touch of his lips went straight to the root of Kun’s heart, which began to thump wildly. “You must think about Seulgi and Sooyoung, Kun. The sisters. Where have you seen them before?”

"Seulgi and Sooyoung? I—I'm not sure. Ten, what do you mean I'm still dreaming? Are you not really here?"

Ten shook his head slowly, and as he did so, his form began to blur at the edges, like he was being draped in shadows. "No, Kun. But you knew that already."

"No," Kun whispered, screwing his eyes shut tight, as though not seeing a thing could also make it not real. "No, please, Ten. I can't forget you again."

"You won't. You won't. You will never forget me again. You are already protecting yourself in that way. I will leave you with the things you already know. Remember how strong you are right now. You are just born. Remember what they called you, Sunburst. 

“Now you must think. About the sisters and what they want. About where the shadowed path in the woods goes. And you must find a way to wake up and come back to me."

"I'm awake, I'm awake," Kun pleaded. He opened his eyes to see the light behind Ten's eyes dimming, to see his whole figure fading before him. He grasped at Ten's wrists harder and sobbed when his fingers tightened around his own palm into a fist. Ten was not here. There was only himself. "No, please. No! Don't go! Ten—!"

Kun awoke in the middle of the night to the wind howling outside and to thunderous pounding at his door downstairs. His face was wet and he was still crying, sniveling as he touched the space beside him in bed and found it cold. This time there was no light under the bathroom door, only the moon casting its silver glow into his room through the window.

He ached for what he’d lost. Again.

But underneath the ache there was now fury, simmering. How dare the witches take Ten away from him.

He heard a muffled shout rise from the ground level, coupled with the frantic pounding. “Kun! Kun! Open up! It’s Johnny!”

Kun sat up in bed with a gasp. Johnny! Did he know now? Did he remember everything, too? He swept his hand underneath his pillow, scooping the moonstone into his palm, before jumping from his covers and frantically searching for the mug where his amethyst shard still sat, submerged. In his haste, he knocked the mug on his nightstand onto the floor, and water and the amethyst spilled out. Swallowing a curse, he picked it up and, without bothering to check his appearance, Kun pocketed both stones and sprinted out of his bedroom, flying down the stairs. He threw the front door open, panting, and saw that Johnny was drenched on his doorstep as a storm raged behind him.

"Taeil!" Johnny shouted, coming inside. The wind was so strong that Kun struggled to close the door, but he managed, and the cacophonous weather stayed where it could not reach them. "His name's Taeil. He's my husband. For some reason he isn't here with us and it's really, really freaking me out, Kun," Johnny said, teeth chattering, trailing snow and mud and water into the house with every step he took.

"When did you remember?"

"Just now. It came to me. When the storm started. I knew I had to come over." He sat heavily on Kun's couch and then cursed loudly, standing again. "Fuck! I messed up your couch. It's all wet. I'm all wet. Fuck!"

Kun ushered him back into his seat. "It's fine. It's okay, Johnny. I don't care about the fucking couch. This is still a dream. This is still  _ my  _ dream."

Johnny looked up at him from the couch, uncomprehending.

"You're in my dream. You remembered because I remembered." Kun sat next to him on the couch, sensing the edge of knowing like it was salt on his lips. He just needed to flick his tongue out for a taste. "Johnny," Kun continued fervently, "Are there spells or rituals that can control memories and dreams?"

Johnny blinked, taken aback. "There are a few, but…but such spells and rituals that deal with dreams require a lot of energy. More than one person needed, almost always. The closer the relationship between the witches, the better."

"So," Kun said. "Would you say that sisters in the same coven might be able to pull something like this off?"

"Like this?"

It still wasn't tracking for Johnny. Kun could see that, so he spelled it out for him. "I met two sisters in the market. Seulgi and Sooyoung. I think they put us here. I think they're keeping us here for a reason. And they kept Ten and Taeil away from us, as well. When Donghyuck tried to reach me—"

"Donghyuck tried to reach you?" Johnny interrupted. “Why didn’t he reach out to me?”

Johnny could not hide the hurt on his face, and Kun patted him consolingly on the arm. "He tried to reach you, first," he offered. “When he couldn’t, he got to me instead.”

"Why are they doing this?"

He thought about the sisters and what they wanted. About where the shadowed path in the woods went. He thought about Ten and his innocent curiosity and kindness, his wild beauty, the warmth of his heart.

And then he knew where the path went, and he knew what the sisters wanted. The color drained from Johnny’s cheeks as he came to know what Kun knew, too.

"Necromancy is..." Johnny started haltingly, swallowing hard. "It doesn't bring a person back the way you want them to be back."

“But that's what they're doing. They're desperate. Donghyuck said there was a wall. That he couldn’t see past a certain point in the woods behind the house. When I was out earlier, there was red tape marking off a path. It must be the same. I have to get to the shack!" Kun realized, jumping to his feet. “That’s where he is. That’s where  _ I _ am.” His fury was erupting out of him like water out of a geyser. He didn’t care what the sisters thought they’d lost; they couldn’t take Ten away from him. He knew now what life was like without him—it was a life half full, grey and monotonous, joyless and soulless. He’d crush their beating hearts in his own fists.

"Kun, it's hard to wake up from spells like this. They might have slipped you a draught." Johnny reached out with a steadying hand but Kun swiped it away impatiently, and Johnny fell back onto the couch with a short cry of surprise.

“That doesn’t mean I don’t try,” Kun said. “This is  _ my  _ dream, remember? I’m in control here.”

“If there are two sisters controlling the dreams, then—”

“Two others are performing the ritual.”

“And the fifth? They would need a fifth for this. For what they’re trying to do. It won’t work without a fifth.”

“I am the fifth,” Kun said. “This is what she meant, when she said she would borrow my power.” The frost in Joohyun’s voice when she’d told him what they were planning sent a shiver down his spine. “My body must be there with them right now. And Ten—Ten must be—” He choked on a cry lodged in his throat. He knew they were together in the waking world, physically close but unable to sense each other, to see each other. It was a pain like no other. “He needs me.”

He went to the door and stepped into his boots, tucking his flannel pajama bottoms into them, and plucked his winter coat hanging from one of the hooks. Next to it was the dog collar. Ten’s collar. He ran his fingers over the soft, buttery leather. Brilliant blue and white lightning streaked across the sky, followed by a low, earth-shattering roar of thunder.

“I’ll kill them if they’ve hurt him, Johnny,” Kun said. 

“Kun, no—” 

Johnny fell silent when Kun’s gaze flicked toward him. In the space of a breath, Kun strode through the living room to the back door, slipping into his coat as he moved. 

“When we’re awake,” Kun promised. The rage was white-hot in his fingertips. He knew he was still dreaming, but he had never before felt so connected to his own emotion, so grounded in it. He had been afraid of hurting Ten with his magic before, but now there was no room for fear in his veins. He had power; he would use it. “You won’t be able to stop me.”

“Kun, your eyes…”

He opened the door.

Sooyoung stood just beyond the frame, bedraggled, the dye of her black dress running down her legs like squid ink, her lipstick smeared across her lips like a bruise. “Hello, Kun,” she said with a horrible smile, and then she lunged forward with her hands in the shape of claws, reaching for Kun’s neck.

He fell back onto the floor with Sooyoung on top of him and shrieking into his ear, slamming his skull against the ground. Pain flared behind his ears, disorienting him and blinding him as she raked her nails across his face, over and over. “You can’t go!” she screamed. “You can’t go! We aren’t done yet!”

“Get off!” Kun shouted, trying in vain to push at her shoulders while shielding his face with his forearms. She was slippery as an eel and twice as heavy as she looked, drenched as she was, and she fought wildly against Kun and Johnny both when Johnny rushed over to help. Kun struggled to get his feet underneath himself so that he could roll them over while blow after blow landed on his forearms and face, and finally he was able to take advantage of her offset balance when she raised both of her fists into the air.

“Argh!” was her strangled cry when Kun flipped their positions, pinning her to the ground with her wrists above her head. Johnny quickly held her by the ankles. “Let me go!” she said while snapping her teeth ferociously. She reminded Kun of a wild animal, trapped and cornered.

“Are you here alone?”

She spat in his face.

Kun shook away the spittle and felt the fury pulse under his skin like a hot coal. “Your sister,” he pressed. “Where is she?”

“Seulgi is too soft for this hard, bloody work.” Sooyoung threw her head back and laughed. “We didn’t need her here anymore.”

He was troubled by this. Seulgi had tried to help him, after all. “What did you do to her?”

“Why do you care? We know you don’t care for your own kind. Preferring the company of mutts and bloodsuckers. Monsters, all of them. They all belong in the ground.”

In a way, Sooyoung was right. Kun didn’t have time to care about anything else right now. He needed to get to Ten. “You won’t get away with this. I’ll find Ten. We’ll wake up,” Kun hissed, putting all his weight into his hands on her wrists. He wanted to bury her. The desire was so strong that he felt it rattling in his bones. Outside the cabin, the wind changed direction, and slowly, they sank. 

Sooyoung didn’t realize what was happening at first, still hissing and trying to kick, her hair spiraling out in inky tendrils behind her head. “We will succeed,” she taunted, her violet eyes narrowed and a slick, cruel grin on her face. “Even with Seulgi’s betrayal, you’ll be too late. We're nearly done already. There will be nothing left of him when you wake.” 

And then the floor began to give way to her body. She stilled underneath Kun, the whites of her eyes gleaming, as the ground pulled at her hair and skin. The floorboards melted around her form and slowly sucked her in, like quicksand. Struck with fear, she screamed and tried to flail, but the ground had become the texture of wet, heavy cement, and it clung to her fast, rendering her immobile. 

Johnny gasped and stumbled to his feet, letting go of her ankles, and soon feet were pulled under. “Kun—” 

“You don’t control me,” Kun said to Sooyoung, standing slowly and letting the ground take her.

“What is this spell?” she cried, disappearing still, her breath short and panicked. It was strange to see terror reflected in her eyes. “Let me go!”

“What happens to you if you die here, in  _ my  _ dream?” 

“Wait! Wait, no—!” she pleaded as the ground formed over her chin, and then her cheeks, and then finally, her eyes. The ground rippled like it was the surface of a lake, and Kun had thrown a pebble in, and then it was still and whole.

A breath in the silence that followed.

“Kun, what did you just do? Is she dead?”

“Don’t, Johnny,” Kun said, his voice dangerously thin. The fury had replaced his heart. “You heard what she said.”

“But, this…”

“There’s no time. Stay and help her, if you think that’s important.” Kun went to the door that was flung wide on its hinges and stepped out into the cold, his feet sinking into the snow. He did not look back to see if Johnny would follow him.

He measured the clouds that hung overhead, dark and fat with the promise of rain, and the snow that crunched underfoot, treacherous to navigate. On a normal, clear day, on a trail devoid of snow, if he kept up a steady but aggressive pace, he could have made it to the shack in a little over half an hour, but Kun didn’t have half an hour. He wasn’t even sure he had minutes. 

“This is my dream,” he repeated to himself, clenching his fists. His body, still singing with power, felt unbreakable. He was in control here. He held his breath and took a step, and the world of his dream shifted around him. The first step brought him to the edge of the woods. The next to the red tape marking off the forbidden path. And a final brought him to the sagging facade of the shack itself, knee-deep in snow. 

It was just as he remembered. A squat, single-story cabin with a hole in its roof and a front porch that was derelict with decay. He released his breath, shivering, and proceeded forward with determination as the sky broke after a sudden crack of thunder and flash of light. The rain fell heavily and mercilessly, pounding the snow into the ground. When he held his hand up like a visor to shield his eyes, the rain began to curve away from him as it fell. 

Then he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. A shadow peeled itself away from the side of the shack. Kun rooted himself to the ground with his feet, preparing for an attack.

But as the shadow came closer, its water-logged shape sharpened around the edges and formed Seulgi, pale and drawn, her arms hugged tightly across her chest. 

“What do you want?” Kun barked.

She flinched and froze, presenting a flimsy barrier between Kun and the shack.

“Are you here to stop me, too?” Kun asked when she remained silent.

“No,” Seulgi whispered. It should have been impossible for Kun to hear her through the rain, but he did, as clearly as though she were right next to him, speaking into his ear. She dropped her gaze to the ground. “No. I’m here to apologize.”

His heart shattered inside of his chest and filled his lungs with its shards. He couldn’t breathe. Did she mean he was too late? Was the ritual completed? “No,” he said, shaking his head and pushing on, though he was trembling, towards the dilapidated structure. “No, no, no—!”

“I’m sorry,” Seulgi called out behind him, her voice carrying in the howling of the wind, in the splashing waves of rain. “I’m sorry for what my sisters and I have done!”

Kun could not hold back a scream as he launched himself up the rotten steps and through the door that hung on its rusted hinges. In all his time knowing this shack existed, he had never been inside, and now he saw at once that the layout was similar to the first floor of his own cabin. There was the kitchen to his left, and the living room before him. All the old, moldy furniture in the room had been pushed to the sides. An old fireplace in the center of the farthest wall would have made a cozy centerpiece, had the house not fallen into total disarray. Though rain fell through the hole in the roof in the corner and through the floorboards underneath, all was quiet within, almost like he had left the storm behind. His scream died in his throat.

In the center of the open space was a pentagram drawn in white chalk. Five figures sat around the points of the star, connected by their hands in a circle. He recognized four of them: Seulgi and Sooyoung first, and Joohyun next. The fourth, he recognized from his dreams but didn’t know by name. Their eyes were closed as they chanted in silent synchronization, and their forms were faded, translucent and shimmering in the silvery light that emanated from the center of the pentagram. 

He stepped around the formation so that he could see better.

At the fifth point of the pentagram, Kun himself sat, legs crossed, head tucked into his chest, eyes closed. His winter coat was draped over his shoulders, and underneath, he was still wearing pajamas. The amethyst amulet glowed under his chin. Kun reached his hand into his pocket and curled his fingers around the crystal, gasping at the heat that bit into his skin. He was looking at himself, and he was sleeping. How was he supposed to make himself wake?

He stepped around the formation again and stilled when he saw what was in the center of the pentagram, what was illuminating the circle with such bright light.

There was a girl in a red dress crouched over a body, different from the others in that she was whole, not paper-thin and sheer. There were edges to her. Cupped within her small hands was a throbbing, bloodied mass of tissue, and from it dripped dark, purple blood that trickled down her forearms and streamed from the knobs of her elbows.

That’s where the light was coming from. As Kun watched in uncomprehending horror, she dipped her face toward it and ripped into it with her teeth. At the same time, daggers of pain sliced into Kun’s chest, dropping him to his hands and knees with a cry, and his ears began to ring as an invisible pressure tried to flatten him to the ground.

He fought against it, groaning, and looked toward the girl, whose black eyes were staring at him. Blood covered the lower half of her face, fell in rivulets from her chin. Beneath her, Ten lay on his side, his chest splashed with red, his golden eyes open and unseeing.

“No!” Kun groaned as the girl gnashed her teeth into the pulsing mess in her hands again. He felt the pain of it ripple inside of him, like someone was trying to peel his soul from his body, like someone was taking a carving knife and slowly fileting his muscle away from his bone. 

But then Ten convulsed, his face contorting in pain, and Kun pitched forward through the pressure, ignited with hope. Ten was alive. Ten was alive and they were connected, still. 

“Get away from him!” 

The girl stilled, her head twitching from side to side as she watched Kun crawl on his hands and knees toward her, toward Ten. The witches continued to chant silently, their bodies unmoving, unable or unwilling to see what was happening around them. The girl took another bite.

Blood filled Ten’s mouth and seeped from the corners of his lips. Kun watched Ten reach for him, the physical him, the one who was sleeping in the waking world, and he pushed forward against the pressure though it grated against his skin like gravel, though it made him raw. “Wake up!” he cried to himself. “Wake the fuck up!”

Ten was fading, the light behind his eyes dimming, while the girl’s edges grew even sharper with every bite she took, her face painted in sticky, dark blood. Loosing an animalistic cry, Kun dove toward her, hoping to push her away from Ten, but instead he fell through her body and skidded on his elbows and knees to the other side of the pentagram. 

The girl paid him no heed. She ate, and ate. 

Kun rose up and faced his body that remained still and complacent at the fifth point of the pentagram. “Do something!” he shouted. He wound his arm back and let it swing toward, and when his hand connected with his body’s cheek, he felt a hook latch around his navel and  _ pull _ , so hard that the world tilted on its axis and reformed around him.

His senses bombarded him when he opened his eyes. 

He felt like he’d awoken trapped in an airplane’s turbine engine. Wind whipped at his face, at his body, from all directions, and there was a constant roar like a thousand screams. Gravity ground him into the creaking floorboards mercilessly, making it hard to raise his head. And yet above the mayhem, he heard the melodic chanting of the witches around him, heard the storm raging outside, heard the wind as it whistled through the trees. Heard the thunder rolling in, the way the glass in the broken windows vibrated, the way ice formed and shattered under the cold rain. He smelled singed hair and smoke, sweet copper and iron. He raised his eyes and saw Ten, reaching for him. He saw light.

The magic of the pentagram was heavy and dark. Kun could feel the dense, molten core of it pulling them toward the center. Kun tested the limits of his movement and realized he was bound by invisible bonds into place, cross-legged on the floor, hands in the hands of the women on either side of him, Seulgi and the unnamed witch. 

“Shit, he’s awake!” he heard from a corner of the room. A rush of footsteps followed. He craned his head to see, to measure. A woman with a silver dagger in her hand, a crossbow hitched to her back ran toward him. 

Kun felt the universe at his fingertips. 

He realized that he was the universe and that the universe was him. When you were the universe you were also everything, and if you were everything you were also nothing, and if you were nothing then anything was possible. 

He tilted his chin to the side. She went careening into the wall with a strangled cry, and slid to the floor, motionless.

“Jisoo!”

Another woman, another dagger. Kun exhaled in her direction and she flew back, out of the front door of the cabin as though thrown from a great explosion. The witches around the circle had not ceased their chanting, but now their violet eyes were open.

“Quickly!” one of them muttered between breaths, panicked. 

They began to chant faster, and in the center of the circle, Ten cried silently, his arm still stretched toward Kun but no longer reaching, the pool of blood around his body widening. Kun could hear the moments between Ten’s heartbeats, fluttering much too quickly in his ribcage. He could smell the fear over Ten’s skin like sweat. 

He could feel the universe fighting to take hold of the nothingness inside of him, and he submitted to it. In his submission came a rush of power.

The magic binding him in place snapped like twigs underfoot. He remembered and accepted it now; he was a vessel, a valve, a tap sprung open, and ancient power surged in his veins. There was nothing for him to fear. Chants and ceremonies and rituals were not needed to invite magic in—not when he was everything there ever was, and everything there ever would be. 

He lifted his hands, and the house shook on its shabby foundations.

Seulgi let go of him with a gasp. The energy in the room immediately shifted as though the house had been tackled by a giant. 

The witch to Kun’s other side crushed his fingers in her grip desperately. “Seulgi!” she screamed, her voice raw. “No!”

But it was too late. The circle was broken, and the magic contained within began to fight against the protective circle of chalk on the floor. Kun could see the raw magic like it was a wild, tentacled monster, its limbs flailing and seeking energy sources outside of the circle. Amidst the chaos, Ten lay so still. 

“I can’t, Wendy,” Seulgi cried, curling inward. “This is wrong, this is so wrong—”

Wendy tried to yank Kun’s hand back down to the ground. “Come back! We’re so close!”

When the monster reached out to Kun, he accepted it into his body. He was a vessel, after all. A valve. He swallowed it whole, and everything happened simultaneously: the rest of the circle shattered, the witches dropped their hands to their sides at once as though compelled, and the chalk lines broke apart when the pressure lifted. 

Silence rang in his ears. 

The ritual was over.

Ten was still at the center of it all. Ten, his heart. His soul. 

Across from Kun, Joohyun screamed, the sound bloodcurdling and wretched. “ _ You!” _ She pointed her finger not at Kun, but at her sister Seulgi, who was slumped in exhaustion, same as the others. “You! We’ve lost Yeri forever!” 

“Joohyun—”

“No!” Joohyun turned dark eyes filled with hurt and despair to Kun, and then her gaze fell to Ten. “Give her back! Her heart—it’s ours! It’s mine!” She looked around herself wildly and picked something up off the ground before crawling forward, scrabbling at the floorboards in her haste. A small knife glinted in her hand when she raised it.

She drove it down with a cry.

Kun was not sure how he moved, but within a blink he was crouched over Ten’s body, Joohyun’s wrist in a vice grip in his hand. Her face was pale, white as snow, her eyes round and shining with madness. Her knife clattered to the floor. He spoke in a hollow voice. “I said I’d kill you if you hurt him.”

A deranged smile cracked over Joohyun’s face. She had taken up the knife in her other hand and now she slashed at Kun without control, feral in her intent to maim and injure. Her movements were too unpredictable for Kun to avoid, and a sharp pain suddenly bloomed in Kun’s side. She’d stuck him right under the ribs and buried the knife to the hilt. 

“We couldn’t have hurt him without  _ you _ ,” she hissed, pulling the knife out and raising it again. Without thinking, Kun flicked his hand and Joohyun went careening into the wall and crumpled to the floor in a heap. 

Stunned, Kun gathered Ten into his arms as blood poured from the wound in his side, and a storm of emotions rose up inside of him, clashing and fighting, each one contending for the surface. Guilt and despair, anger and longing, acceptance and wrath. Ten was limp, sticky with blood from where he lay in a mess of it, and still more blood seeped sluggishly from the gash in his chest, a straight line carved down the length of his sternum. They had hacked at his hair, and parts of it were uneven and parts of it were shorn close to his scalp. Kun brought him closer, clutching him tight against his own body, so that he could cup his cheek and kiss him gently. Ten's lips were cold. 

Around him, the witches groaned as their energies began to return to them.

A siren song played his ears, as one feeling finally won over the others and expanded inside of him like a blackhole, overtaking his heart. 

Loss. 

Overwhelming, gaping, throbbing loss. He was falling endlessly into a pit, and the pit was growing ever wider. He couldn’t control it; he didn’t want to control it. He wanted to drag everything down into the pit with him.

Joohyun cursed as she sat up. “Everything we’ve done, for nothing,” she spat.

Loss was a living thing, and it erupted from Kun with the force of a volcano. He remembered distantly that Johnny had warned him of this.  _ Vesuvius _ , Johnny had said. 

An explosion of power rocked the shack and knocked the other witches back from the circle. Joohyun was again thrown into the wall, this time perilously close to the edge of the hole in the floor under the gap in the roof. Seulgi toppled into the legs of the old coffee table. Wendy smashed into the wall. And Sooyoung shrieked when she was thrown against the fireplace, skull cracking against stone. 

He held Ten tighter and sobbed into his love’s hair as his ears roared with the wind furiously circling them, forming a barrier between them and the outside world. Safe in the eye of a storm of his own making, Kun dragged his finger slowly up Ten’s chest, mumbling words of prayer in an ancient language that came to him without effort, like the words had always been there deep within the folds of his brain. He watched as Ten’s skin knit itself back together under his finger, leaving behind a thick, risen scar. 

“Your heart still beats,” he said, placing his palm over Ten’s chest and his lips on Ten’s forehead. “It beats. It beats, please, please, please—”

Though he was focused on Ten, he caught three of the sisters moving out of the corners of his eyes. Wendy, who was closest to the door, slunk out of it, leaving her sisters behind, and meanwhile, Seulgi had gone to Sooyoung to help her to her feet. 

But Joohyun remained still, eyes transfixed on Kun, watching and waiting.

"It beats," Kun repeated. "I _need_ you." Under Kun’s palm, Ten’s heart fluttered to life weakly, and three beats later, Ten took a sputtering, pained breath, shivering with the chill of death in Kun’s arms. Kun drew him in close again, face flush against Ten's neck as he sobbed in relief.

“Impossible,” Joohyun whispered. “You could—you could help us—”

Kun hissed, “Why would I help you?”

“Joohyun,” Seulgi pleaded from the side. Sooyoung leaned heavily against her, her arm draped over Seulgi’s shoulders. “Sister, please. We need to  _ go _ .”

“Yeri is lost,” Joohyun said, standing slowly, her eyes brightening. “Yeri is lost but maybe not to you, not now. Not like this. Kun, you are—”

Kun would not hear anymore from her. The wind threw her back against the wall, and pummeled her so she could not rise again. 

“Joohyun!” Seulgi screamed.

“You’ve taken from me,” Kun said, bringing Ten higher so that he could press his lips between Ten's brows. He felt Ten’s heart struggling under his hand, and he shook with rage, and pain, and anguish. His tears burned like fire across his skin. And meanwhile, Joohyun was fighting to stand, her eyes glinting with crazed hope. She wanted him to help her after all she had done to Ten? Impossible.  The storm gathered above him, thunderous, murderous, and lightning streaked across the clouds like spiderwebs. He wanted her to hurt. “So I will take from you.” 

The familiar touch of Ten’s palm against his cheek made him falter. Ten’s golden eyes were filled with such tenderness and sadness. He held his breath as Ten pushed himself up, higher, so he could lay his cheek on Kun’s shoulder, press his nose into Kun’s thrumming pulse. The small burst of movement left Ten panting, and warmth gripped Kun’s heart. He heard Ten’s thin, wavering voice above all else. “Don’t let it consume you,” he said. “Come back to me.”

Kun wept. 

He wept as lightning streaked into the cabin with a sound like a thousand cracked whips and filled the room with the brightness of the sun. Its heat blazed around him, scorching his skin, and he curled himself over Ten’s body to shield Ten from it as much as he could. 

Beyond them, Joohyun screeched in pain.

And then when it was enough, Kun made everything stop: the screaming, the lightning, the storm. Time stilled as smoke filled the room. The lightning left behind a pitchy darkness Kun could not see past. He smelled singed hair and smoke, sweet copper and iron. He held Ten in his arms and gave himself to the dark.

.


	4. Chapter 4

“I don’t like it. Why is she here?”

“She brought something with her.”

“We don’t have to let her in, Johnny. After what they did…”

Kun roused to the sound of hushed conversation just outside the door. It took a moment for him to understand that he was in Johnny’s bedroom, and that he was in Johnny’s bed. His brain was cotton. He was comfortable under the covers, but aching all over, and his mouth was dry. There was a heavy weight on his chest. Heavy, but familiar.

Kun looked down at the tuft of black hair just under his chin. Ten’s head rose and fell slightly as Kun breathed, his arm draped across Kun’s belly. The scent of cedar and pine filled Kun’s lungs. The corners of his lips pulled upwards stiffly into a small smile as he wrapped his arms around Ten’s slender waist.

“She’s here to make amends. Maybe we should let her make amends,” Kun heard from the hallway.

The door creaked on its hinges when Johnny eased it open. He stood in the frame, a dark shadow against light, with Taeil hovering behind his shoulder. “You’re awake,” Johnny noticed, his voice soft. He strode into the room and fell into the armchair that had been pulled beside the bed. “God, you’ve been in and out for days. What do you remember? How are you feeling?”

“Too many questions, Johnny,” Taeil chided, stepping into the room also.

How was he feeling? Like he’d been run over by a truck and then melted into the pavement. The smell of singed hair and skin still clung to the inside of his nose, reminding him of what he’d done. Still, he couldn’t find the energy or space for remorse. He was bone-tired. He searched inside of himself for the power that he’d wielded for minutes out in the woods behind the cabin and came up disappointingly short. Only a spark remained, if anything. He was a Sunburst no more. Kun wondered absently if he'd ever feel that sort of power again.

But he quickly discarded the thought. He had Ten in his arms. That meant everything to him. Kun opened his mouth and managed to croak from his dry throat, “Has Ten…?”

Johnny’s shoulders stiffened, and Taeil’s eyes went tight in the corners beside him. Kun looked between them, anxiety mounting the longer the silence went on. He gently moved Ten from his chest and laid his head on the pillow they shared, a fist squeezing around his heart when he saw how Ten pale was, his lips nearly bloodless, his veins stark blue and visible just underneath his skin. He was not entirely cold, but he was not warm, either.

“I’ve done everything I know how to do,” Johnny whispered. “Donghyuck, too. But he won’t wake. Seulgi is here. She says she has something that could help him.”

“Then let her in,” Kun demanded.

Taeil’s lips thinned. “Kun, are you sure you want to—?”

Kun cut him off. “Please, let her in.”

Taeil disappeared, and moments later Kun heard the exchange of halting greetings downstairs as Taeil allowed Seulgi inside. Kun's breath shuddered when he pressed his lips against Ten’s cool forehead.

“What happened?” Kun asked, eyes unable to leave Ten’s face. He brought Ten’s hand to his own chest and bent to kiss his knuckles. Ten was not only pale, but thin, too. His cheeks had lost their fullness, and the shadows under his closed eyes were deep and grey. Kun closed the distance between their faces, if only to feel Ten’s shallow breaths across his lips. 

“We found you inside the shack, Kun,” Johnny said. “It took me so long to get Taeil out of the silver chains and stakes, and by the time we got to you, you were…we thought you both were dead. You’d been stabbed. There was so much blood.”

Kun felt the way his side pulled when he breathed, but only a slight discomfort remained. “I remember,” he said. “You healed me?”

Johnny bowed his head. “I tried to.”

“Why didn't you help Ten? Why won’t he wake?” Kun’s eyes flashed in anger, in accusation, but the anger quickly died inside of him when he saw how devastated Johnny looked in his seat, his broad shoulders hunched and narrowed. Kun's lips trembled with the pain that accompanied his questions. He shifted closer to Ten until their bodies were aligned under the covers. He wanted Ten to reach for him, to fill the gaps between them, but Ten was unresponsive as a ragdoll, pulled this way and that. "Sorry," he mumbled in guilt. "I know you must have done what you could."

“The ritual was nearly done,” Seulgi said from the door. 

Johnny turned in the armchair, and Kun’s eyes flicked to Seulgi, who paused in the doorway before walking slowly into the room. Seulgi’s shoulders were tight by her ears, her eyes downcast. Dressed in jeans and a baggy sweater, she looked younger, and smaller, and sadder. She held a pouch in her hands.

Taeil, lips curled into a menacing snarl, shadowed her steps. “The ritual you and your sisters started.”

Seulgi shrank and stilled, hands wringing the pouch between them. “I can’t take back what we did. But I wanted to help. And apologize. I’m sorry. I know an apology isn’t enough, but. But I thought this would help.” She presented the pouch to Kun, but it was Johnny who took it from her, as Kun had cradled Ten against himself protectively. She chewed on her bottom lip. “It’s a restorative potion," she explained. "Feed him one dose per day. Our sister, Yeri—she was sick. She’d always been sick. And there was nothing the hospitals could do. We developed a potion that gave her life on hard, bad days. I thought that Ten—”

“ _ Don’t _ say his name,” Taeil warned.

“I thought that it would help,” Seulgi finished quietly. “And I thought you should know that we’re leaving. And we won’t come back. Ever.”

“Good,” Kun and Taeil said at the same time.

“How do we know this is not poison?” Taeil continued.

“It’s not,” Seulgi claimed, eyes wide. “I’d never—”

“Forgive us if we can’t believe you,” Taeil said icily.

Seulgi reached for the pouch, and Johnny returned it to her. She took out its contents: three vials of black liquid, each vial the length and width of a thumb. “Choose one for me to drink,” she said.

Taeil glared at her, and Johnny stared until Seulgi’s nostrils were flaring, her cheeks red. Finally, Kun said, “You helped me in my dream. I believe you,” and Johnny gathered the potions into his hand.

Seulgi exhaled, nodding. “That’s…that’s good. I need to get back to them, now.” 

When Seulgi turned to go, Kun felt compelled to call out to her. “Joohyun. Is she…?”

“She’s lost without her connection to magic,” Seulgi said. Her eyes shone with emotion when she glanced behind her shoulder at Ten. “As sacrifices go, it’s a powerful one. But…she’ll be fine, after a while. Jennie will make it so.” A pause as she took in their blank expressions. “One of the hunters. She—she stayed even after you—well, she’s with us now. And I understand why you did what you did.”

“Joohyun was dangerous,” Kun said.

“I know,” Seulgi said quietly. She slipped out the door. Taeil disappeared again, presumably to make sure she left, and Johnny held the vials out to Kun.

Johnny asked, “What do you want to do?”

.

Kun waited and waited, a statue in the armchair by the bed. More than once in the past couple of days, Kun wondered if he was still dreaming. This couldn’t be his reality, because his Ten was warm and bright, full of life. He felt like his heart could give out every time Johnny came by to tip water into Ten’s mouth, drop by drop so that he wouldn’t choke on it, every time Taeil and Johnny carefully moved him so that he wouldn’t grow sores. Hour by hour, the chasm of despair in Kun’s chest grew. 

The potions did not work right away. In fact, he had no guarantee they would work at all. As night fell on the third day and the vials were emptied, Kun crawled into bed with Ten and promised himself he would not leave it again until Ten awoke. 

It was difficult to sleep without crying. He wanted Ten to hold him back, but Ten was still, his body cool under the covers. So he placed Ten’s arm around his side and brushed his hair back from his face. Clean and soft after being washed, the patchwork of shaved bits and uneven chunks was not as stark as before, but the image served as another reminder of what had been done to him.

“Come back to me,” Kun pleaded, kissing Ten on the lips, streaking Ten’s face with his tears. He dug down deep into himself and pulled at the connection to magic that still remained, tugging on its string. It would not be enough, and Kun had tried it countless times already, but he was desperate. “Come back to me,  _ please _ .”

.

Some hours later, Kun fell into a light, restless sleep. He dreamed he was running on the trail behind the house. It was still early winter, the air crisp and chill, but not cold enough that it made his fingers want to snap off. It had not snowed in a while, so the ground was compact and dry—good for a jog. Ten loped at his side, barefoot and grinning, eyes flashing with competition.

“Getting tired yet?”

Kun spoke between breaths, measured and deliberate. “Slow and steady wins the race.”

“Well, you’re certainly slow,” Ten teased.

“I’m  _ human _ .” Kun pouted and gestured at the path ahead of them with a sweep of his hand. “Go on. I know you want to show off.”

“No, I want to stay with you.”

Kun gasped, the words carrying a weight and significance that did not need to be explained in a dream. He tripped over his own feet and tumbled to the frost-bitten ground, and when he righted himself again, Ten had disappeared. Panic set in so quickly that Kun became dizzy with it.

“So stay!” Kun scrambled to his feet and shouted into the trees, quickly distancing himself from the marked path. “Ten! Ten, where are you?!”

He heard a roar in his ears, felt a presence at his back. He turned, and Ten was there, pale and cold and trembling. “I’m here,” he said, though it sounded like he was begging, pleading.

Kun’s eyelids flew open when he felt fingers digging into his chest, pushing him back weakly. They were in bed, and Ten was moving. Kun instinctively tightened his hold around him and pressed his lips to his forehead with such vigor that Ten’s head tilted back, making Kun startle when Ten whimpered in pain.

“I’m sorry!” Kun gasped, forcing himself to soften his arms wrapped around Ten’s waist. His heart was going off like a jackhammer in his chest, and the combination of excitement, hope, and anxiety made his movements jerky and harsh. “I’m sorry, love. I’m sorry. Oh, Ten. Ten, open your eyes. Please open your eyes…”

He held his breath, watching Ten’s face for every microscopic movement, tracking the way his eyes danced behind his eyelids, the way the corners of his mouth tightened. Slowly, delicately, like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, Ten’s eyes fluttered open. 

A wave of relief crashed over Kun, and he exhaled shakily, heart beating in his throat. Overwhelming joy felt a lot like overwhelming despair—both emotions flooded Kun’s eyes with tears—but what he was feeling now felt a lot like the swoop in his belly whenever he heard Ten laugh and the kick of his heart whenever Ten turned that bright smile in his direction. He felt he was seeing the first, watery light of the sun in Ten’s golden eyes after a long winter night, and there was the promise of spring on the horizon.

Ten was awake. The potions had worked. Ten was going to be okay. Kun sent a silent note of thanks to Seulgi, though it wounded him to think of the sisters in this moment. He didn’t dare touch Ten for fear of hurting him again and crossed his arms over his chest to keep himself from breaking this self-imposed rule, though he remained close enough that he could count the flecks of darker amber streaked in Ten’s eyes.

Ten blinked slowly. His tongue darted out to wet his dry lips. He looked at Kun like he was trying to see something that was far in the distance, his eyes unfocused and his gaze uncertain. “Kun?” 

“Yes,” Kun whispered, elated. “Yes, it’s me. How are you feeling, love?”

Ten’s answer was in the shadow behind his eyes that grew darker with each breath he took. He looked like a man who had just been saved from drowning, his pupils whirling pits of confusion and pain. Ten had seen death, but now he was washed up on the shores and grasping at life, and he reached for Kun with shaking hands. “Hungry,” he said.

.

Donghyuck came by the house, weighed down by canvas bags full of produce. He’d barely put them down by the shoes before he was tripping up the stairs. “Is he awake?” he called out to anyone who could hear him in the house. “Let me see him!”

“Donghyuck,” Kun said quietly. He had asked Taeil to help him bring Ten down to the living room with them, after Ten insisted he just wanted to be near everyone, and now they were on the couch, Ten’s head in Kun’s lap. Johnny shifted Ten’s legs from where they were draped over his thighs and stood with a weary groan, going to Donghyuck, while Kun cupped his hand over Ten’s ear because Donghyuck crashing through the entrance had made him flinch. Taeil, who was reading in the nook in the corner, had looked up at Donghyuck’s intrusion and glared. “We’re in here.”

Donghyuck froze, about-faced, and dashed into the living room. “Holy shit,” Donghyuck whispered as he neared. “Holy shit, holy shit, can I—? Ten, are you—?”

Kun felt Ten struggle to sit up, so he helped him without calling attention to it, arm looped low around Ten’s waist as Ten leaned heavily against his shoulder. “Be gentle,” Kun warned Donghyuck.

Ten’s arm shook when he held it out from his side, and Donghyuck slid into the space underneath it, burying his face into Ten’s shoulder. “You’re alive,” he said, his voice muffled. “You’re alive and you’re okay and don’t you  _ ever  _ do that again, you hear me?”

“Be the sacrifice in a necromancy ritual? I’ll do my very best not to,” Ten quipped. His lighthearted laughter ended with him wheezing and shivering into Kun’s side, and Kun held him close, smoothing his palm over the scar over his chest to soothe him.

Donghyuck lifted his head, worry all over his face. “I brought the stuff you asked for, Kun,” he said. “Except, well, I didn’t really know how much you needed of all the ingredients...”

Johnny lumbered past the opening of the living room shouldering three of the canvas bags Donghyuck had left by the door. “Hyuck, what is all this? Did you buy a whole potato farm?”

“Fuck you, Johnny,” Donghyuck said. “I bought like, a sack. And the carrots looked nice so I bought a bunch of those. And the butcher just gave me loads of chicken bones. Like,  _ loads _ .”

“I didn’t ask for potatoes, though?” 

“I just like potatoes.” Donghyuck shrugged. “I’m sure we can make something with them.”

“You did well, Donghyuck.” Kun offered him a smile as Ten recovered his breathing. “The broth will take a while to make, so in the meantime, Ten, how about we try to get some crackers into you?”

Ten pulled a face but didn’t vocalize any protests, and Donghyuck sat up, raising his hand like he was a student volunteering for a project. “I’ll help.”

“I want your rice porridge,” Ten complained.

“That would take some time, too,” Kun said sympathetically, “but I can get started on that, as well, if Johnny has some rice.”

“Lucky for you I’ve been coming over every day and making it,” Donghyuck said. “Otherwise, Johnny hardly ever has  _ human _ food lying around anymore.”

"I make him human food," Taeil bristled from his corner. He dog-eared his book and set it on the stand beside his armchair. "He eats well."

"Yeah, but how can you make anything without garlic?" Donghyuck asked. "Garlic makes everything taste good."

"I can eat garlic," Taeil insisted. "It just doesn't taste very good to me, and makes me feel queasy. Brat." Taeil sighed as he stood, and the sound struck Kun as distinctively human, since Taeil didn't technically need to breathe. "I suppose I should help Johnny with the chicken bones. He isn't very good with things like that."

He passed behind the couch on his way out of the living room, pausing by Donghyuck and patting him on the head awkwardly. Donghyuck looked about a breath away from bursting out into laughter, eyes wide with amusement as Taeil stiffly walked away.

Things had changed between the brothers and Taeil over the past couple of days. The threat of death had forced them closer, and their shared concern over Ten meant they had to share space, as well. Kun could tell that not everything was fixed between them, as tension still remained, but at least they were trying.

Kun dropped a kiss to Ten's forehead and chuckled when Ten keened in the back of his throat happily. "I'll be back with some crackers. Donghyuck will keep you company while I cook."

"I love you," Ten murmured. "If I'm dreaming, then I don't want to wake up."

A cold shiver lanced down Kun's spine. He cupped Ten's cheeks in his hands and looked into his golden eyes, only speaking when he was sure Ten was focused on him. "I love you, too, and this is not a dream, Ten. You're awake."

.

Kun took over Taeil and Johnny’s kitchen, preparing the ingredients for the chicken broth carefully even though he had done this dozens of times before. This time, as he cut the carrots and celery ribs into large chunks, he tugged on that connection to magic he was now familiar with and let it flow, inviting it in so that it could bless his fingers, his kitchen knife, the cutting board, the raw ingredients. Smoothly, he dumped the chopped ingredients into a large Dutch oven, laid the chicken bones over them, and prepared a sachet of dried herbs to add to the flavor. There was no lingering uncertainty this time, nothing that could get in the way of or twist his intention and his power.

He thought of healing, and of love. Of Ten's uninhibited, brilliant smile.

When the broth began to bubble, he started on the rice porridge, also. As a kid growing up, the porridge had been one of the first things his grandmother had taught him how to make. He remembered, even before starting school and while his parents were working at their restaurant, standing at the stove on a stool beside his grandmother as she showed him how the grains of rice broke down in the pot over time. "You can add whatever you want to it to make it special," she'd told him. "I like mine best with ginger, scallion, and preserved century egg."

He didn't have any preserved century eggs with him here, but Johnny had a leftover knob of ginger and scallions that were still bright green in his fridge, so he peeled the ginger and sliced it into thin shreds, adding this to the pot of rice and water, and sliced the scallions to be sprinkled on top later. When the broth was done, he could pull the sparse meat from the chicken bones, too, to add to the porridge.

"How is he?"

Kun perked up from where he was checking the strength of the gas flames under the burners. Johnny stood with his hip against the sink, a mug in his hands that wafted the aroma or a strong, dark brew. A baggy cardigan that would have been a blanket over Kun's shoulders hugged his form. He blew on the steam rising from his mug, his eyes half-lidded and dark.

"Hurting," Kun said, "but trying to hide it."

"He doesn't like to be a burden."

"He's not a  _ burden _ ," Kun immediately retorted, squaring his chest.

"I know." Johnny raised his eyebrows. "I know that, Kun. I've known him for almost five years. I'm just saying, that's the way he thinks."

Kun deflated. "Right." He tore his eyes away from Johnny's to look at the bubbling broth and porridge, swirling the ladles inside the pots and pretending to check the heat again. The reminder that he had known Ten for only a couple of months felt like a sack of bricks in his stomach.

"And how are you?"

"Me?" Kun startled at the question, losing grip of the ladle in his hand. Luckily, it only sank into the pot, winding around in the tiny whirlpool Kun had created.

"Yeah," Johnny said. "I was with you, in the dream. For a while, anyway. You were..." Johnny trailed off, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

"I was what?" Kun pressed.

"You were different, is all," Johnny said. "I know you care about Ten a lot, but Kun, you went through something, too."

He didn't need the reminder. For days, Kun had been trying to keep the sense of loss at bay. He had Ten back, and that was all he wanted, but he'd also had a taste of true, absolute power. Power that ran deep, and ancient, and wild. It left a taste like electricity on his tongue, and he didn't think the desire to taste it again more fully would ever leave him. "But I didn't almost die."

"But you did almost kill." Johnny set his mug down on the counter and crossed his arms, and for a moment Kun was reminded of his father, stern and weary. "That kind of power, that kind of intention…it leaves a mark."

"I'm not like Joohyun," Kun insisted. "I won't be like her."

"That’s not what I’m worried about. I'm just checking in on you, Kun."

"Well, there's no need." Kun dialed the knobs on the stove down until the flames were small, bringing the soups down to a rolling simmer. He didn't like what he'd done with all his power, but if he had to do it all over, he'd probably still do the same thing. The image of Ten reaching for Kun as the life slowly drained from his eyes flashed in Kun’s mind every time he blinked. "Do you think—do you think Ten would have been safe if I had never come here?"

"Oh, Kun. I don't know. I'm not a Seer."

Kun's shoulders slumped. "Right—"

"But I can tell you that he's happier, with you. You make him really happy."

"Do you think he'd rather be happy, or alive?"

"What do you—oh." Johnny's face fell. "Kun,  _ no _ ."

Kun was gutted by his expression. He read between the shock and sadness and found pitying understanding. He needed to leave. "I'm going to check on Ten," he told Johnny, shuffling his way past Johnny and avoiding another question, another look of sympathy.

.

The day passed slowly, tinted dark and grey from the rain that fell steadily outside. It took nearly two hours for Ten to finish a small bowl of porridge, but he managed, and they sat around on the couch afterwards, curled into each other as the world continued around them. Taeil read in the corner, and Johnny and Donghyuck disappeared into the library, emerging every so often to get something from the kitchen or another room. Ten dozed for most of the day, and Kun let him, keeping his hand placed over Ten’s chest to make sure it was still beating all the while.

That night, they went to Johnny’s bed again, while Johnny and Taeil took the other room, and Donghyuck camped out on the couch. They kissed with the covers pulled up around them, and though Kun felt a stirring in his lower belly at the tender touches, they didn’t manage much more before Ten was panting and shaking all over, clutching at Kun and hiding his face against Kun’s neck.

“Kun,” he said, unable to keep the tremor from his voice. “It hurts.”

“What does?”

“My chest. My heart.”

“Rest, Ten.” Kun kissed the top of his head, smoothing his hand down Ten’s spine. Guilt ate away at him, and he swallowed a hard lump in his throat. “Just rest. You’ll be okay.”

They slept twined together, limb over limb, and Kun could not help but think of a rope, its fibers braided tightly to give it strength, and about how easily the rope would unravel if it were cut at one end.

.

When morning came, Kun awoke facing Ten’s smile, which was more brilliant than the sun. A wrinkle formed over the bridge of his nose when he smiled like that, completely unrestrained. “I’ve been waiting,” Ten whispered, his voice husky with sleep. “I feel better today.”

“That’s good, Ten,” Kun slurred. His eyes had not yet fully opened. 

Ten announced, “I’ll get us breakfast,” and then he rolled off the bed and promptly fell to his knees with a muffled yelp of surprise.

“Ten!” Kun was on the other side of the bed in an instant, on the floor with Ten, pulling him up with a grunt as Ten’s grin turned sheepish. “Are you hurt? Are you okay?”

“I guess I’m still a little off-balance,” Ten answered, scratching at his hair and wincing. He sighed when Kun sat him on the edge of the bed.

“You have to take it easy,” Kun admonished him lightly. “You’re still healing. It’ll take some time—”

“But how much time?” Ten held onto Kun’s hands, pulling on them, coaxing Kun to stand between his knees. “I’m fine, see?”

“I don’t know, Ten. Your body will take as long as it needs.” He lifted his hands and pushed his fingers through Ten’s patchwork hair. The shaved bits were already growing in some, fuzzy and soft. He wondered how much Ten remembered of his ordeal, and he suspected Ten remembered more than he was letting on. “Why don’t we get some food, and then we’ll see if there’s anything I can use to fix up your hair?”

“And then can we go home?” Ten asked.

_ Home _ . The word jolted Kun out the hazy, golden feeling of contentment that had quickly settled over him while talking with Ten. “Home?”

“Your cabin,” Ten clarified.

Uneasiness crawled into Kun’s chest. “Ten, you know that place isn’t mine, right?”

“You’re renting, I know. You made that  _ very  _ clear those first couple of weeks. But it’s like, our place. So, home.”

He thought about telling him then. By now, Kun estimated he had a week left in the cabin before he had to move out. He’d return to his place in the city, and Ten? Maybe Ten was better off staying here, with Johnny and Taeil. He’d be safe here. But he couldn’t bear to dim the glow on Ten’s cheeks, and instead bent low to kiss him, cupping his face in his hands. “You’re right,” Kun said. “It is like that. We’ll go after breakfast, how does that sound?”

Ten kissed him back, and in his kiss Kun tasted the electricity of magic, and the sweetness of love.

.

Going back to his cabin was a surreal experience, as Kun could not help but feel he was returning to his dream. Everything was just as he had left it: Ten’s collar hung on a hook by the front door, the throw blanket on the couch draped halfway across the floor, his laptop balanced precariously on top of a leaning stack of magazines on the coffee table. When Ten tripped over the threshold in his haste to go upstairs, Kun laid a hand on his arm, stopping him, worried he would see Sooyoung’s face in the floorboards behind the couch.

“Kun?” Ten asked, head tilted in confusion.

Everything was just as he had left it. Kun craned his neck to look behind the couch. Of course Sooyoung wasn’t there. That had been a dream. Kun shook his head to erase the thought completely. “Nothing,” he said with a small smile. “Just hold onto the railing so you don’t fall.”

“I’m recovering from injury; I’m not a small child,” Ten huffed with some indignation.

“I know that,” Kun laughed, even though he wouldn’t have called what Ten went through an “injury.” He followed behind Ten, admiring his energy with one breath and questioning it with his next. From what he’d seen, Ten had the tendency to move on quickly from things that were hard, to compartmentalize and turn to the next question or challenge. Sometimes this meant his endless curiosity could never be sated, and sometimes this meant not sitting with lingering pain. Physically, Ten healed quickly; Kun wondered if Ten rushed himself through the emotional and mental recovery to keep up.

They reached the top of the stairs and went into the bedroom. What Kun saw made him pause at the door. The bedroom was not as he had left it. At least, not how he remembered he had left it. The covers were a pile on the floor, and all of the pillows—Kun counted five—were haphazardly strewn around the room. The bathroom light was still on. Ten glanced over his shoulder at Kun from his place before the bed, cheeks tinged pink with embarrassment as though he had been the cause of the mess. 

“What happened here?” Kun asked.

Ten bent low to scoop up the pillow at his feet and thumped at the cushion to rid it of the fine dust it had collected on the floor. Clouds of dust exploded into the sunbeams filtering in through the window. “Do you want to wash the covers? You like things to be clean.”

“Ten, what happened?” Kun repeated, walking over to another pillow that lay in front of the door to the bathroom. He picked it up, gathering it into his arms. 

“You were asleep,” Ten said. He sat on the edge of the bed with the pillow hugged against his belly, looking forlornly at the blankets pooled at his feet. “And then you weren’t. You threw everything off the bed and tried to shove me off, too, but I’m stronger than you.” His face pinched around a conflicted expression as Kun sat on the bed next to him, touching shoulder to shoulder. The atmosphere shifted palpably like a cloud had moved in front of the sun. 

Ten shivered into his pillow, and Kun threw the cushion he was holding back onto the floor in order to swing his arm around Ten’s waist. “I’m stronger than you, but when you got up and started walking, I couldn’t stop you. Maybe if I’d been stronger…” Ten whimpered and turned toward the comfort Kun was offering, nuzzling his face into his shoulder.

Kun’s heart broke as Ten’s quiet, slow tears seeped through the fabric of his shirt. He couldn’t allow Ten to blame himself for what had happened. Not when Kun’s very presence here was what caused the whole, horrible mess. “It was me, Ten. I was the one who needed to be stronger.”

“You went downstairs,” Ten continued, his voice smaller and more distant now, a bit hollow. “You opened the door. I got your jacket because I knew you’d be cold. I followed you outside. I followed you to the old house.”

“The run-down cabin.”

Ten nodded. “The witches were there, and some of the hunters, too. I recognized them.”

Kun felt his lungs tighten, his breath escaping him. “Ten, why didn’t you run when you saw?”

“And leave you there?” Ten shot up, looking affronted at the very thought. “I could never do that.”

The fire in Ten’s eyes made Kun’s belly swoop. He was swollen with love, filled with it, and still greedily wanted more. Kun brought his palm to Ten’s cheek, drawing Ten’s face nearer to his own and gasping when Ten took the initiative himself to close the distance between them and crush their lips together in a burning kiss.

Kun’s head spun. Electricity snapped through his veins, all the way down to his fingers and toes, when Ten nibbled on Kun’s bottom lip before pulling away slowly. Their chests heaved in synchronized breaths. “I’m yours, Kun,” Ten said. “When are you going to understand?”

“I do understand,” Kun said, hands warm around Ten’s face again. He brushed his thumbs across Ten’s wet cheeks. “I understand completely. But I can’t help but think that if we had never met, maybe—”

“If we had never met, I would still be a wolf. I would still be alone.”

“You have Johnny and Taeil. You have Donghyuck.” Kun shook his head and closed his eyes against the devastation that made itself plain across Ten’s face. 

“It’s not the same. I’m not  _ theirs _ . Kun, you made me want to be human again.” He felt Ten’s nose against his cheek, his breath against his lips. Ten pressed his body into Kun’s until Kun relented and made space for him in his lap.

“Because of me, you’ve been hurt. So, so badly, Ten.” 

“And I’ve healed.”

“Not just physically,” Kun insisted. He should tell him now that he was leaving, that Ten would be safer staying in these woods without Kun and his magic, but instead he pulled Ten in even closer, arms wrapped tight around his waist. “I made a promise to you to keep you safe, and I couldn’t keep it.”

Ten stilled with his arms around Kun’s shoulders. The whimper he made in the back of his throat was full of heartbreak. “You want to leave me here,” he realized aloud. 

"I don't  _ want _ to," Kun said. He buried his face in Ten’s soft hair and choked back a sob. “God, I don’t want to.”

“So don’t,” Ten pleaded quietly. “Don’t, Kun.”

“I think you’ll be safer if I’m not around—”

“You can’t take that choice away from me.” Ten’s mouth hovered over Kun’s pulse, hot breath spilling over Kun’s skin. His shoulders began to shake under Kun’s touch. He clung to Kun as though afraid Kun would run out of the house at this very moment and never return. “I know you. I want you. I choose you. Please choose me. Choose me back.”

Kun remembered, suddenly, the conversation they’d had ages ago when they were standing in their kitchen with Ten at his elbow, white domes of dough in their palms and flour streaked over one of Ten’s cheeks. Ten had told him about his family, about waking up alone in a hospital, about his sister’s note, about the way he had been left behind. His home had been ripped away from him once already. Could Kun do that to him, too? Abandon him after growing to love him so deeply? 

While in the act of it, falling in love with Ten had felt as natural as breathing, and Kun hadn’t realized the depth of his feelings until faced with losing him. Loving Ten was like finally capturing the taste of a forgotten favorite dish from childhood, the burst of flavor carrying with it the warmth and closeness of family, the hopeful optimism of youth, the pure and unadulterated joy of new discoveries. The rush of emotions was not unlike the power Kun had wielded when he brought lightning down from the sky to strike Joohyun. 

Ten made everything feel raw and electric and wild, but Kun craved control. He found comfort in the carefully planned, the meticulously detailed. He believed the more he knew about a thing, the more power he had over it.

But he didn’t want power over Ten, and he didn’t want to control him, either. He wanted to be with him, unafraid to love him. 

“Okay,” Kun said, coaxing Ten to lift his face and look at him. He held Ten’s wet cheeks between his palms and felt the last remains of the locks around his heart shudder and release when Ten’s lovely, golden eyes met his. The freedom that came with giving himself over to someone completely was exhilarating, and he began to cry, the tears slow and silent. “I choose you, too. I’m so scared I’ll hurt you or you’ll be hurt again because of me, but I’ll do better. I’ll learn more about my magic. I’ll protect you.”

Ten inched closer, the smile blurry on his face. He pressed their foreheads together with a sigh and murmured, “You don’t need to protect me. Just be with me. Open yourself up to me.”

“I will. I have.” 

They kissed, and this time it did not burn; instead, contentment and peace washed over Kun like a wave. He was home.

.

Kun stood in the doorframe, looking out across the backyard into the trees. His nose was running slightly from the chill and the tips of his ears were starting to go numb. Johnny and Taeil had already been by, dropping off what little Ten owned, packed into one cardboard box. Though they said their goodbyes, none of it felt final. Johnny joked that now that Ten was leaving, he had more reason to visit the city and to drag Taeil with him. They’d spent all morning packing Kun’s belongings into two large suitcases and cleaning up the house, and now Kun was waiting for Ten to come out from the woods. He’d wanted one last run.

The beauty of Ten’s wolf skin left Kun breathless. The rust-colored tone of his thick fur glinted fiery red in the afternoon sun, glittering with ice crystals, as Ten trod out of the trees at a loping pace, tongue lolling out of his mouth. 

Kun held out his arms. “Did you have a nice run?” Kun called out cheerfully.

Ten picked up his pace, eyes mischievous and eager. He dashed through the snow and leapt into the air, and when he landed on his feet he was human.

And naked.

He crashed into Kun with a bright laugh and brought them both to the floor just inside the door. Unabashedly, Ten licked Kun’s cheek with his tongue.

“Ten! We talked about this!” Kun struggled under Ten’s weight, but it was a happy struggle. He was glad to fit his hands around Ten’s waist.

“I can’t shift  _ with  _ clothes,” Ten said, dropping a kiss to Kun’s cheek and then planting his face in Kun’s neck, seeking skin contact underneath the layers Kun was wearing. “And I can’t resist  _ you _ . One more kiss before we go.”

Kun obliged and brought his hand up to cradle the back of Ten’s skull to push their lips together. He curled his fingers in Ten’s short, cropped hair, licking into his mouth. When Ten rolled his hips downward, he groaned, barely able to stop himself from pushing up against it. “If you keep doing that, we’ll never get off the floor. Is that what you want?”

“Yes,” Ten whispered, smiling cheekily.

“Well, alright, then.”

It was much later than Kun had planned before they were in the car and ready to go, but when Ten held Kun’s hand over the stick shift, squeezing his fingers in excitement as Kun started the engine, Kun found he did not care that things hadn’t gone according to plan. He squeezed Ten’s fingers back, grinning from ear to ear, excited for what was to come.

.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos greatly appreciated!
> 
> thank you to a, my lovely lovely beta who gave such amazing and helpful feedback <3 thank you for many others who read snippets and supported me as i tried to finish this. it's been so fun to write wolfie and i really don't think this is the end of this universe <3
> 
> [my twitter](https://twitter.com/andnowforyaya) | [my cc](http://curiouscat.me/andnowforyaya)


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